ONE CRAZY CREE - 12/20

12/20/1879 - Just three years removed from the Sioux victory over General George Armstrong Custer at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, on a cold winter Saturday, citizens of Fort Saskatchewan in Alberta, Canada witness their town's first official hanging when a Cree Indian named Swift Runner (Ka-Ki-Si-Kutchin) is executed for being a Wendigo (or at least thinking he is one) that murders his entire family and eats the corpses.

Swift Runner

Part of the folklore of the First Nations Algonquin tribes that populate the northern forests of Nova Scotia, the eastern coast of Canada, and the Great Lakes region of both Canada and the United States, the Wendigo is said to be a malevolent monster with spirit and human characteristics that wanders the forests seeking victims ... in some cases it kills and eats its prey, in others, its spirit possesses the human it victimizes, transforming the person it encounters into flesh seeking monster too, capable of rape, murder, and an insatiable need (the more it consumes, the more it wants more) for human flesh.  The creature is associated with winter, cold, famine, and starvation and appears as a giant gaunt figure almost skeletal in nature covered in suppurating, death smelling, ash-grey skin, with eye eyes, and talons and fangs for disposing of its prey  Much as clinical lycanthropy designates a psychological condition in which a human believes they can transform into a wolf, the Wendigo has lent its name to a mental disorder, Wendigo psychosis, in which an individual transforms into a monster cannibal with an massive, unending appetite.  It is a psychosis that will consume Swift Runner.

Wendigo

Hunting

A member of the Cree Nation (he is born in Alberta, Canada), Swift Runner grows up to be a huge, thickly muscled outdoorsman, standing over 6'3" tall.  Prior to 1878, Swift Runner is considered a pillar of the Indian community of Alberta ... he has a mild personality, is considered a smart and trustworthy individual by fellow Crees and fur traders of the Hudson Bay Company.  He is considered to be a good husband to his wife, and a loving father to his six children.  Supplementing his hunting skills, he puts food on the table with his pay from whites, for a time being employed as a scout and trapper for Canada's Northwest Mounted Police (an organization born only six years before, in May of 1873).  There is a problem though, as Swift Runner develops a taste for whiskey (illegal to the region, it is snuck into the area disguised as patent medicines), and when drunk, he is a completely different person, a mean lush who will be described by some as "the terror of the whole region."  One too many incidents of violent drunkenness (some of his benders last up to three months, and Swift Runner's tribe finally sends he and his family (his wife, Charlotte, mother-in-law, brother, and six children) packing into the woods.  Out of sight, out of mind, Swift Runner and his family are forgotten until in the spring of 1879, the Indian stumbles out of the wilderness and into a Catholic mission and relates a horrific story of his wife's suicide and the entire rest of the family's demise from starvation (although the family is only twenty-five miles away from emergency supplies at a Hudson Bay Co. trading post).  The priests at the mission though notice that Swift Runner appears to be very healthy.  That fact, combined with knowledge that other Crees in the area have had successful winter hunts, Swift Runner having screaming nightmares every night, constant small changes in his tale, and his attempt to lead a group of children into the woods finally cause the mission to contact the mounted police.  Given the task of finding out what took place out in the woods, Inspector Severe Gagnon and a small squad of police take Swift Runner back into the woods and have the Indian take them to his camp.  Eventually finding the camp, Swift Runner points out where his eldest son is buried, and the police dig up the grave and find the corpse undisturbed, the rest of the dead they discover have been terribly disturbed ... and more!

Gagnon

Bones Of The Swift Runner Family

A graveyard in the woods, the camp gound is covered in bones, many snapped open with the marrow sucked out.  Producing a skull that belonged to his wife, Swift Runner's original story of starvation falls apart and his family, excepting the eldest son, now are identified by Swift Runner as being victims of a Wendigo.  It is a Wendigo that came to Swift Runner in his dreams, telling the Indian to eat those around him and transforms the Indian into a monster.  Wendigo rampage, the monster kills Swift Runner's wife first, then that murder accomplished, forces one brother to kill another and then butcher the remains, hangs the family's infant from a lodge pole and then for the pure barbaric pleasure of the screams it produces, tugs on the baby's dangling limbs, and eventually murders the rest of the family, including his mother-in-law (who Swift Runner will state was "a little tough") and brother, then dines on the flesh of the victims as needed through the winter.  Evidence gathered, the horrified mounties return to Fort Saskatchewan with Swift Runner in irons.  Put on trial before Stipendiary Magistrate Hugh Richardson on August 8, 1879, Swift Runner faces a jury that includes three English speaking half-Crees and four men familiar with the Cree language.  Additionally, to make sure everything is on the up-and-up and Swift Runner doesn't get railroaded by proceedings he doesn't understand, a Cree man translates the entire court proceedings and there is a Cree/English scholar on hand as an observer  to make sure Swift Runner understands what is happening.  No defense presented, Swift Runner sits calmly through witness testimony against him.  His only comments during the proceedings when asked if he has anything to say, he states quite simply, "I did it."  Indeed, and the trial does not last long with no one believing Swift Runner actually turned into a Wendigo (the jury deliberations last all of twenty short minutes).  Found guilty of murder and cannibalism, Richardson sentences Swift Runner to be hung on 12/20/1879 at 7:30 in the morning.

Richardson

The Fort These Days

The sentence however presents a problem for the authorities ... the wilds of Alberta have never before been the site of an official execution.  First timers doing the best they can, Staff Sergeant Fred Bagley, a bugler for the Northwest Mounted Police, is put in charge of arranging the hanging ,,, arrangements that include building a gallows when the walls of Fort Saskatchewan and hiring a hangman from among the locals for $50 (the "winner" is an old Army pensioner in need of money named Rogers).  The night before his execution, Swift Runner refuses to spend the evening with a priest, stating, "The white man has ruined me.  I don't think their God could amount to much."  Pitch black, bitterly cold, and snowing when Swift Runner is brought out of his cell on Saturday, the 20th, the hanging is delayed when it is discovered that folks (there are about 60 people at the hanging) waiting to witness the execution have taken the gallows' trap and burnt it to keep warm in the storm, Sheriff Edouard Richard is late to arrive due to the snow and cold, and the hangman has forgotten to bring the straps meant to bind the prisoner's arms (the necessary length of rope required for the job is soon procured) .  Two extra hours of life granted by the delays, wearing the noose around his neck that will snuff out his life, Swift Runner sits next to one of the fires burning within the fort, chatting with witnesses, and having a last meal of a pound of pemmican as repair work is done on the gallows.  Commenting on the proceedings, the killer makes the authorities an offer, "I could kill myself with a tomahawk and save the hangman further trouble."  Finally ready to go, Swift Runner is led to the scaffold and a black hood is placed over his head.  Last words time, Swift Runner admits his guilt once more, then thanks his jailers for their kindness during his incarceration, before berating his guard that morning for making him wait two hours in the cold for his ending.  Dropped five feet to his death (and the Wendigo's demise too) seconds later, Swift Runner is left hanging for an hour, then cut down and buried in the snows outside the fort.  One old time sourdough veteran of the California gold rush named Jim Reade that witnesses the execution sums up the event for readers of the Daily Evening Mercury newspaper ... "Boys, that's the purtiest hangin' I ever seen, and it's the twenty-ninth."

Wendigo And Victim

Wendigo

         
  

  

 

COP KILLER COOKED

12/19/1958 - Providing the raw material and framework (along with the 1952 ordeal of the Hill Family of Whitemarsh Township in Pennsylvania) for a best selling novel, a Tony winning play (featuring Paul Newman in the role of escaped convict Glenn Griffin), and three films (the first, in 1955 stars Humphrey Bogart as Griffin, the second, a 1967 TV remake has George Segal playing Griffin, and the 1990 remake features Mikey Rourke as the chief bad guy), all called "The Desperate Hours," the brief criminal career of  29-year-old Richard Carpenter comes to an electrical end in the death house chair of the Cook County jail in Chicago, Illinois.

Carpenter

Born in 1932 as a public enemy crime wave sweeps over the Midwest of the United States, Carpenter grows up in a world of strife ... the family strife of two parents who grow to hate each other until the father finally leaves his family, and the strife of the Great Depression that causes Carpenter's doting mother (there are also two daughters to take care of) to park him in an orphanage for lack of funds; behavioral problems soon are evident.  Joining the Army at the age of 18, he is also 18 when he is issued a dishonorable discharge and kicked out of the Army.  Returning to Chicago, Carpenter begins a life of low-level crimes that sees the young thug committing dozens of petty robberies for chump change.  In 1951 he is captured by police for the first time after robbing a local cabbie at gunpoint of eight dollars ... a crime for which Carpenter spends a year of his life behind bars.  Trying to go straight upon his release, Carpenter becomes a cabbie himself, but the money he makes at the legit occupation is not enough for the hoodlum, and soon a new Carpenter crime wave hits the city.  His modus operandi is to show up at a bar or tavern just before closing time (sometimes he even has a drink before getting down to business), whip out a pistol, and then help himself to whatever money is in the cash register (usually a sum between thirty and three-hundred dollars).  Loot secured, he then runs out of the business on crepe-soled shoes and vanishes into the night ... no getaway car is ever used.  For months, in almost seventy robberies, Carpenter terrorizes Chicago's many gin-mills, and the authorities don't know the culprit's name.  Carpenter's phantom days however end on April Fool's Day of 1955.

Carpenter's Family

Following his regular routine, entering a small tavern just before its closing time of 2:00 in the morning, Carpenter pulls his pistol and demands whatever cash is in the till, but there is a difference to the robbery this time around ... one of the patrons in the bar is off-duty police officer, Medard Bosacki.  Pulling his weapon and targeting Carpenter, Bosacki turns into a statue when the gunman points his weapon at the bartender's head and says he will pull the trigger if Bosacki doesn't put his weapon on the bar.  Complying with the crook instead of risking bloodshed, Bosacki does what the thief says and Carpenter grabs the registers cash, pockets the police revolver and exits into the night.  The robbery though is the beginning of Carpenter's problems ... Bosacki identifies the robber as local troublemaker, Carpenter, and there are repercussions for taking a police officer's gun and soon the city is flooded with wanted posters for Carpenter.  Manhunt begun, it finally bears sour fruit that summer (it is August 15, 1955) when on his way to work on the subway, Chicago Police Detective William Murphy spots Carpenter and attempts to arrest the "Lone Wolf" robber.  Taking his eyes off Carpenter for only a second as the officer reaches for his handcuffs, rattlesnake quick, the thief whips out a pistol and shoots the police officer in the chest with Bosacki's stolen pistol, transforming himself into a killer as he flees the subway platform where Murphy's bleeds (only 33, Murphy leaves behind a wife and two daughters).

Murphy

Incensed at the loss of one of their own, the authorities flood the area with cops but Carpenter seems to have vanished again, until two days later, off duty officer Clarence Kerr decides to take in a movie with his wife at the Biltmore Theatre at 2046 Division Street.  Movie over, Kerr sees a man asleep in a back row of the movie house that he believes might be Carpenter, and gun at the ready he decides to rouse the man (a decision his wife tries to talk him out of) ... and suddenly is confronted by a growling bear holding a revolver.  "Well I guess you got me," Carpenter states as he comes awake and then bolts out of his seat.  Gunfire exchanged, the thug runs out of a side door while Kerr slumps to the floor of the theater, shot in the chest (almost a second cop notch for the killer's gun, the surgeon that saves Kerr's life says that if the round had hit the officer while his heart was expanded instead of contracted, Kerr would be a corpse ... showing his fortitude, Kerr gets off five shots at the Carpenter before collapsing).  In minutes seem to be everyone as Chicago's finest react as if John Dillinger had come back to life, as newspapers, televisions, and radios are filled with the story of the hunt for Carpenter, but he is gone again ... briefly.

Kerr At The Theater Receiving The Last Rites

Kerr, His Wife, And Surgeon

Two blocks away, just returned home after a long day driving his truck, Leonard Powell is confronted at the screen door of his kitchen by a sweaty stranger holding a gun with blood stains on his pants ... Richard Carpenter.  No introduction necessary but one given anyway, the gunman forces his way into the home stating, "I'm Carpenter.  I just shot another policeman.  If you behave you won't get hurt.  If not, I'll shoot you.  Now let me in."  Taking Powell, Powell's wife Stella, and their two children hostage (Diane, 2, and Robert, 7), the family suffers through an ordeal which newspapers will call the family's "desperate hours."  Seconds to minutes and the minutes become hours, Carpenter paces about the house and his hostages blathering endlessly about his life and crimes, while occasionally pausing briefly to peer out from behind the curtains of the Powell abode at the police search going on outside.  Not the sharpest blade in the kitchen, when the next morning arrives, Powell convinces Carpenter that he will be missed if he is not allowed to go to work.  With warnings of what will happen to his family if he talks to anyone about who is in the Powell residence, Mr. Powell completes a full day of work worrying constantly about his family, but returns to his home without telling a soul his secret.  A rerun of the first evening, after 23-hours with Carpenter, Mr. Powell decides he has enough and expands on his tale of the day before ... if the rest of his family is not allowed to go about their normal routines, it will be noticed and will draw the authorities to the Powell home ... and with the result of nothing happening the first time he released Powell, the pinhead killer allows the rest of the family to also vacate their home.

Outside The Hostage House After

  A horribly bad decision that will end up costing the killer his life, as the family reaches their front porch, Powell whispers to his wife to get everyone out of range as quick as possible without bringing attention to herself, then he walks off in the direction of his father-in-laws home, stopping as soon as he is out of sight of Carpenter to call the police.  Already in the neighborhood, three minutes after the call over thirty police squads respond and have the area cordoned off and are at Powell's front door.  Immediate exit required, Carpenter leaps through a window at the side of the house and enters the neighboring apartment of Stanley Sciblo.  He is quickly located inside and after he refuses to surrender, the Chicago authorities flood the unit with tear gas before entering,  Fighting back at first (the thug will be described as reacting like a vicious, cornered animal), Carpenter gets a well-deserved beat-down, before finally accepting his arrest as he whimpers for the arresting officers, "Don't shoot."  Taken to the nearby Bridewell Hospital to have his wounds treated, Carpenter confesses to a host of robberies and to shooting police officers Murphy and Kerr.

Busted

In For Attention

Arraigned

At trial, Carpenter's lawyer tries to blame all the killer's crimes on him being nuts, which the hoodlum backs up by acting the fool during the proceedings and constantly being aggressive with his handlers.  The insanity plea of course falls on deaf ears and it takes his jury only 90 minutes to find him guilty of first degree murder in the shooting death of Detective Murphy.  Sentenced to death in the state's electric chair, appeals last three long years before the Illinois Supreme Court rules that his execution should be carried out.  And so it is ... at 12:04 in the morning of 12/19/1958, Carpenter's Chicago crime spree ends with the 29-year-old killer receiving three massive jolts from the chair that stop the killer's heart.

Fighting Officers

Drug Into Court

Before Carpenter dies however, there is one more moment of craziness the killer leaves behind.  In his last act other than walking to the chair and getting juiced, Carpenter takes the heel off of one of his shoes.  Asked what he is doing by one of his guards, Carpenter replies, "I don't want anybody else to stand in my shoes."  Walking to his death, Carpenter states that he doesn't believe in God, and that he is going to the chair and there is nothing he can do about it.  As reported by the Chicago Daily Tribune, Carpenter's last muffled words as a black hood is pulled over his head are, "Get it over with quick." 

Electric Chair

           

THE MURDER OF THELMA TODD

12/16/1935 - Hollywood produces an unfilmed murder mystery full of cliches come to life and huge personalities when 29-year-old movie star, Thelma Alice Todd, known about town as "Hot Toddy" and the Ice Cream Blonde," dies in a closed garage above her Pacific Palisades restaurant at 17535 Pacific Coast Highway, Thelma Todd's Sidewalk Cafe ... a death a befuddled Los Angeles grand jury will rule is the result of carbon monoxide poisoning that is "... accidental with possible suicide tendencies."  Suicide indeed if being mob boss "Lucky" Luciano's girlfriend is factored into the equation.

Todd - 1933

At The Sidewalk Cafe

The short life of Thelma Todd begins with her birth in Lawrence, Massachusetts on July 29, 1906.  Her father is John Shaw Todd, an upholsterer from Ireland who joins the city's police force and eventually becomes a powerful politician in the town and state ... an occupation that draws him away from his family.  Quite often left alone and becoming bored with the machinations grasping for power can require, her mother, Alice Elizabeth Edwards Todd, an immigrant from Canada, puts her time and energies into her two children (Thelma's brother, William, will be born in 1911), becoming what will one day become known as a "stage mother" when she begins running her daughter's life by entering her in beauty pageants and modeling contests, which an uninterested Thelma often wins.  Born beautiful, the future actress discovers early how to manipulate first boys, and then men, into giving her whatever she wants ... blue eyes, a creamy complexion, a nice figure, and vanilla ice cream colored hair are put into a package that includes piling up her curly locks atop her head when most young girls wear long sausage curls, wearing short-shorts and flimsy blouses before graduating into going braless, wearing clingy satin dresses and long flowing scarves, and flirting with boys and men incessantly.  And at first what she wants the most is to work with children and become a school teacher by graduating from the Lowell State Normal School (now the University of Massachusetts, Lowell).  Accepted into a program for budding teachers at the prestigious Hood Practice School, Thelma future appears quite bright, but in the summer of 1925 her life changes forever. 

Young Thelma

 Summer vacationing in northern Massachusetts, the Todd Family is struck by tragedy when ten-year-old William is accidentally suffocated and then crushed to death riding on a grain elevator.  Now with only one child to throw her energies into, Alice makes the monumental decision to tear-up Thelma's letter to the Miss Massachusetts Beauty Pageant that she would be going to teaching school soon and would not be participating in the state's 1925 contest (unknown to Thelma, she has been entered in the contest by the Lawrence Elks Lodge 65) and substitute one of her own in which Thelma would be thrilled to participate.  Browbeaten into following through on her mother's promises, Thelma shows up for the pageant, and of course wins ... and as fate would have it, there is a talent scout in the crowd representing the interests of Paramount and Famous Players-Lasky Studios, the most prestigious movie studio in the country with offices in both California and New York.  Goading her daughter again, Alice talks Thelma into the obligatory screen test required for signing a screen contract, and test taken and passed, the youngest Todd's school teacher dream comes to an end and she becomes one of the participants (there are sixteen aspiring thespians in Thelma's class, the most famous of which will be Buddy Rogers, who steals Mary Pickford away from Douglas Fairbanks and stars in the first movie to win a Best Picture Oscar, 1927's "Wings" from director William Wellman) in The Paramount Players School-Stars of Tomorrow located in Astoria, New York.  Pursuing her mother's dream, when Thelma gets off the train that takes her from Massachusetts to New York, she is carrying one suitcase, fifty dollars in cash, and is still a virgin.

Contest Entrant

Thelma At The Paramount School

At the Players School, Todd takes classes in dancing, speech making, diction, etiquette, and singing, trains in swimming and horseback riding, and acts in everything from drama to comedy, learning how to do everything from taking a pratfall for the camera to how to kiss onscreen.  And she also falls in love for the first time, with a handsome, dark-haired fellow student named Robert Andrews.  After six months of intensive training and classes, in the spring of 1926, Thelma takes part in the group's graduating assignment, taking roles alongside Paramount stars like Adolphe Menjou, Richard Dix, Clara Bow, and Chester Conklin in a production called "Fascinating Youth."  After filming, she learns how to open a film, when she debuts "Fascinating Youth" at the Palace Theater in her hometown of Lawrence.  Next up is a role in an early Technicolor film called "The American Venus,"  Thelma then appears in "God Gave Me Twenty Cents," a film that angers Todd's mother when she sees publicity photos of her daughter clad in clingy body stocking that makes Thelma look like she is nude.  Wild women at the gate, when Alice Todd creates a scene at the Players School, the authorities there decide that instead of ruining Todd's career before it really has a chance to begin, they will separate mother from daughter by giving Thelma four days to put her affairs in order and move to Paramount's studio in Hollywood, California (she will soon arrive in Southern California herself and become enmeshed in her daughters career.

Movie Poster

 

Thelma

Alice Todd

The Hollywood Todd arrives in is still experiencing the wildness of the Jazz Age, transitioning from silent movies to talking films, and trying to get past scandals that could kill the budding business, tragedies like 25-year-old beauty Olive Thomas dying in a room at the Hotel Ritz in Paris after accidentally drinking her husband, Jack Pickford's, syphilis medicine, juvenile star Bobby Harron killing himself after being passed over for a role in director D.W. Griffith's "Way Down East," comedian "Fatty" Arbuckle being accused of murdering starlet Virginia Rappe in a San Francisco hotel, the unsolved murder of homosexual director William Desmond Taylor, Rudolph Valentino's sudden death in 1926, comedian Mabel Normand developing a $2,000 a month cocaine habit, Paramount star Wallace Reid dying in a Los Angeles sanatorium while secretly trying to kick an addiction to morphine, 29-year-old starlet, Barbara La Marr, dying from pulmonary tuberculosis and nephritis helped on by her addictions to morphine and heroin, the cocaine related death of actress Alma Reubens at the age of 33, and the unsolved murder of producer, director, screenwriter, and actor (he will be known as "The Father of the Western"), Thomas H. Ince while he is aboard the yacht Oneida, one of the many toys of millionaire newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst (for years it will be rumored that Hearst is gunning for Charlie Chaplin for being involved in affair with his mistress, actress Marion Davies, and hits Ince by mistake).  Contract signed giving Paramount the rights to Thelma's talents for five years at $75 a week (with raises bringing up the total to $500 a week in the final year of the contract), the contract also gives the studio the right to loan Todd out to other studios and she is soon working at a variety of studios making everything from westerns to dramas to comedies.

Arbuckle Mug Shot

Oneida

With Paramount losing interest in Todd due to her continuing unwillingness to be shipped about Hollywood studios and Adolf Zuckor's dismay at having to deal with Thelma's mother, it appears her Hollywood adventure might soon come to an end, but film producer Hal Roach, a master of the comedy genre sees potential in Todd as a comedian, signs her to an exclusive contract with his studio, and seeking to create a female version of his hit makers, Laurel & Hardy, pairs Todd with Zasu Pitts (and then Patsy Kelly after Pitts leaves the studio in 21 more films) in a series of seventeen short comedies (each about 20 minutes long).  Supporting roles and star turns, Todd is a bonavide star by 1931 (she will appear in over 100 films during her brief career) and makes her presence known acting with the Marx Brothers in "Monkey Business" and "Horsefeathers," playing the love interest in several Charley Chase short comedies (the pair also ignite off-screen but decide to just be friends based on their martial status at the time). opposite the comedy team of Wheeler and Woolsey, sparring with Buster Keaton and Jimmy Durante in "Speak Easily," mugging with comedian Joey E. Brown, appearing as the widow Iva Archer in Warner Brothers first version of "The Maltese Falcon," as the girlfriend of Chester Morris in the bootlegger drama, "The Corsair," and as a comic foil for Laurel & Hardy (her last appearance on film will be in the Laurel & Hardy comedy, "The Bohemian Girl")   Bubbly personality, beauty, and talent all wrapped together in one package, Todd appears to have it all, but there are also problems which will reach critical mass in 1935 ... there is her meddlesome mother, the development of addictions to booze (she parties through the night at times and the liquor dulls the hurt of failed romances) and drugs (speed to control her weight), and the anguish of being typecast as being only a comedian and kept from dramatic roles in which she feels she can really shine.

With Groucho

Buster, Thelma And Durante

With Chico

Pitts And Todd

With Laurel & Hardy

And in Hollywood she meets the men (all with aspects of her powerful father in their makeup) who will all be suspects in her untimely death ... producer Hal Roach who kills loan outs to other studios for dramatic roles (who tires of dealing with both Thelma and her mother and their lack of appreciation for what he has done for Todd's career, which also includes keeping her from playing the Jean Harlow part in Howard Hughes' hit production of Hell's Angels), her divorced hustler husband and purpointed mobster, Pasquale "Pat" DeCicco (the pair has many drunken fights ... in one DeCicco has his nose broken by a plate, in another, Todd goes in for an emergency appendectomy ... and it will be DeCicco who introduces Thelma to Charles "Lucky" Luciano), Lucky Luciano who will have a sexual affair with Todd and gets her strung out on amphetamines (trying to set up gambling at Todd's restaurant, Thelma will tell Luciano that gambling will take place "over my dead body" and Luciano will respond in front of a host of witnesses, "That can be arranged" ... tired of the relationship and Luciano's attempts to strongarm her into accepting gambling on her property, Todd has called the Los Angeles district attorney's offices stating she has information about the gangster she'd like to provide to the authorities, and with a mole in the district attorney's office, Luciano finds out in minutes what a threat his former girlfriend has become), United Artists director Roland West who casts Todd in the dramatic film, "The Corsair" (they meet on cruise to Catalina Island), has an affair with the actress, and becomes a co-owner of Todd's restaurant project (along with his wife ... all of whom live on the cafe property, Todd and West in an apartment they platonically share above the cafe, and Jewel in a house above the complex on Pasetano Drive), and Charles Smith, the cafe's treasurer, a man whom both Todd and West believe is juggling the restaurant's books and putting profits from the enterprise into his own pockets (a planned audit of the books is killed shortly after Thelma's death).

Roach

Todd & DeCicco

Luciano

West

On the last weekend of her life, Todd sleeps past noon, calls friends, writes a few Christmas cards, listens to the radio, and takes a long, hot bath while drinking Scotch, then goes Christmas shopping with her mother before attending a private party (she arrives at the Saturday event at 8:15 in the evening) given her honor (leaving for the event, she quarrels with West about not spending time at their cafe with all the Christmas bookings the place has and that he will lock her out of their apartment if she isn't home by 2:00 in the morning ... multiple keys are required to get in and out of the various buildings and rooms on the property) by English stage comedian Stanley Lupino and his actress daughter Ida at the Cafe Tracadero nightclub on Sunset Blvd.  At the party, while having fun with her friends and getting quite sloshed she discovers her former husband has invited himself to the event and the two argue before DeCicco leaves (he is interested in managing the new steakhouse that Luciano wants to turn into a private gambling casino).  Finally done with her fun for the evening, Todd contacts her chauffer, Ernest O. Peters, to come and get her to take her home, while she has Sid Grauman, of Grauman's Chinese Theater call West to tell him that Thelma will soon be on the way home.  Seeing it is now past 2:00, West immediately does as he said he would and after taking the pet the two share for a walk (a dog named White King, he begins locking and bolting doors on the property.  Still in party mode, Todd finally leaves for home when a stranger informs her that Lucky is in town and wants to see her at the beach.  Dropped off in front of the Sidewalk Cafe by Peters, instead of going inside, Todd gets into a chocolate-brown convertible occupied by Luciano (he has secretly flown into town and is staying at the home of a Beverly Hills friend) and a driver.

Cafe Complex

Map Of The Complex

Gangster in control, while Luciano talks about business and love, Todd is driven to Santa Barbara where the pair drink champagne on the beach.  Back in Los Angeles later in the day (they are seen by several witnesses ... there is a stop at the cigar store of W. F. Peterson, a stop on the steps of the First Methodist Church at Eighth and Hope, a brief visit to a Beverly Hills drugstore, and a dinner of roast beef, potatoes, peas and carrots, and lots of champagne at the Beverly Hills home of a Luciano associate and the man's wife ... sightings that all take place after the time Todd supposedly dies), based on the information he has gotten out of Todd, Luciano makes his decision about his former girlfriend, and states for her naive benefit that he wishes her only the best and that she will never see him again.  After calls a local phone number and states a single word, "Cominciare" (begin in Italian), the pair leave Beverly Hills at around 10:30 on Sunday evening.  Arriving at the apartment she shares with West, the gangster lets Thelma out of his car and is driven away with Todd's last words burning his ears, "There are battles and there is war, Lucky.  May you burn in hell."  Moments later, after watching Luciano's car vanish into the cold night fog, Todd walks over to her garage her cafe, and is mercilessly attacked from behind by a stranger that has been hiding in the dark ... the left side of her face is pummeled, breaking Thelma's nose, and choked unconscious, she is moved into the garage and dumped into her car (an action that fractures two ribs).  Then the killer turns on the car, closes the door to the garage, and vanishes into the night.  Last moments an awful failed struggle for survival, growing drowsy as the carbon monoxide builds within the garage, Thelma hits her head on the steering wheel trying to reach up for the keys to turn off the ignition, fails, and falls sideways, wedging herself between the car seat and the steering wheel ... alone, the young actress passes away shortly after midnight on Monday, December 16, 1935 (the body will be discovered in the morning by Todd's black maid, Mae Whitehead).

Crime Scene Photo

Crime Scene Photo

Morgue Shot

No mystery with a modicum of effort by the authorities to solve the case, Todd's injuries are thought to be the result of her thrashing about in the car during her last moments, and when Roland West testifies about locking down the house over her late party attendance on Saturday night (the coroner, Dr. A. P. Wagner, absolutely butchers the time of death, and testimony that Todd was seen driving around Los Angeles on Sunday is discredited) fits into the story the district attorney (Buron Fitts, who commits suicide with a pistol shot to his head in 1973 at the age of 78) and police detectives settle on a ruling of accidental death by way of carbon monoxide poisoning as locked out of her apartment, Todd tries to warm herself in the car and tipsy from champagne, fatally falls asleep in her vehicle (to her dying day, Alice Todd will believe her daughter was murdered by a mob goon (contracted from the rolls of Detroit's Purple Gang) on orders from Lucky Luciano, but fearing for her own life, will not provide any evidence that such is the case to the grand jury that convenes on December 18).  And so, a verdict that makes little sense to many is allowed to become official (and Luciano gets away with yet another murder) as time passes by and participants in Todd's life pass away (cremated, Thelma will reside on her mother's mantel in an ash urn back in Massachusetts by day, and by her bedside at night ... and when Alice passes away at the age of 92, Thelma's urn goes into Alice's coffin and the two are buried together).  Gone but not forgotten, Thelma lives on in the work she left behind, still a very, very funny lady though decades have passed since her young death ... check her out the next time Monkey Business, Horsefeathers, or one of her collaborations with Laurel and Hardy is on a cable television station.

West In The Garage

A Crowd Gathers At the Sidewalk Cafe

Headlines

Saying Goodbye

12/16/1935 ... film star Thelma Todd is murdered in Pacific Palisades, California at the too young age of only 29.

Thelma