Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 29, No. 4, September 1971

The Execution of Barbara Graham by David Mazroff

Unwanted, unloved, she certainly was. She would sell her body for a fix, her soul for a hoodlums smile. But — did Barbara Graham go to the gas chamber in San Quentin for a murder she didn’t commit? Here are some never-before-told answers to a murder riddle that has baffled crime experts for decades.

The last woman to be executed in the United States for a capital offense was attractive, dark-haired Barbara Graham, who died in the gas chamber in California’s San Quentin Prison on June 3, 1955.

She was followed in death by Jack Santo, fifty-four, a thin-lipped, sallow-faced, hard-bitten gunman and hoodlum, and Emmett Perkins, forty-seven, a weasel-featured, heartless thief and all-around bad man.

The three were convicted of the murder of Mrs. Mabel Monohan, a well-to-do, elderly, crippled widow who lived alone in a corner house in a middle-class neighborhood in Burbank, a suburb of Los Angeles, the site of the Warner Brothers Pictures studios where most of the gangster films were made in the heyday of Humphrey Bogart, John Garfield, George Raft, Paul Muni, and Edward G. Robinson.

None of these ever killed in their film roles as viciously as did the perpetrators of the murder of Mrs. Monohan.

The trial of Barbara Graham and her two co-defendants was as bizarre and sensational as was the crime for which they were to pay the extreme penalty. The news media covered it extensively from start to finish, from the moment Mrs. Monohan’s brutally battered body was found until Emmett Perkins was pronounced dead.

Who, really, was Barbara Graham? What made her what she had become, and what events led her to her desperately tragic and ignominious end?

Barbara was born in a slum neighborhood in Oakland, California, in 1923. Her mother was seventeen years old at the time. Her father was as unknown to Barbara as he was to her mother.

Hortense, Barbara’s mother, a harried teen-ager, hated the infant she had brought into the world from the first moment she laid eyes on her, according to Barbara’s own statement. Hortense felt a shame and disgrace for having brought a bastard into being and the more she regarded the result of her sex experience, now regretted, the more she hated what she saw.

Why she didn’t give the infant up for adoption remains an untold puzzle to this day. A short time after Barbara was born, Hortense met and married a man named Joe Wood.

“He was good to me,” Barbara said, “and I didn’t know he was not my real father until I applied for a birth certificate when I was seventeen.

“When I was two years old my mother dumped me with relatives and disappeared with her husband. She and her husband visited me infrequently over the next several years. He treated me kindly, brought me small gifts, and held me on his lap. My mother couldn’t look at me and her whole attitude toward me was one of antagonism. I cried a lot when she came to see me and her relatives because she wouldn’t pay any attention to me. I would run to her and hold out my arms to be taken into hers but she pushed me away.”

“For crissakes, get the hell away from me, you damned little brat!” Hortense screamed. “Get away! You stink!”

Barbara said she recalled Joe Wood saying, “Why don’t you pick her up and hold her? She’s your daughter. Pick her up!”

“I hate the little bitch!” Hortense yelled. “If she wants to be held then you hold her!”

Little bitch!

That phrase may have been a forecasting of what Barbara was to become. Perhaps the phrase stuck in the child’s mind, an anchor in her subconscious, a drag that stayed her ship of life to the pier of degradation, misery, violence, and murder. For a bitch is what she became.

A murderess? That doubt remains and what happened during the trial for the murder of Mrs. Mabel Monohan gives that doubt a great deal of credence.

The relatives with whom Hortense placed Barbara no longer wanted her around and showed it in many ways. When Hortense next came to visit them they told her to take Barbara wherever she wanted to, but out of their home.

“She’s your child, your responsibility. You take care of her!” she was told.

“I’ll take care of her all right,” Hortense retorted.

She grabbed Barbara by an arm, dragged her into the little room where the child slept and packed her meager belongings in a shopping bag. She placed Barbara with a woman named Mrs. Lottie Kennedy, a fat harridan with a cruel streak in her makeup.

Mrs. Kennedy owned a parrot that kept up a steady stream of parrot sounds in its attempt to utter the words Mrs. Kennedy tried to teach the bird to say. Barbara believed the bird wanted to get out of its cage or it wouldn’t protest so loudly and incessantly. She opened the cage and the parrot flew out, landed on a sideboard and knocked over a slim crystal vase which smashed into bits.

Mrs. Kennedy came running into the dining room, stared at the wreckage and the yawking bird and screamed hotly at Barbara.

“You damned little brat! I’ll fix you! I’ll fix you good!”

Mrs. Kennedy yanked her into a corner and told her to stay there, facing the wall. She then went into the kitchen, peeled a large onion, cut it in half and returned to the child, who now was whimpering with fear. Mrs. Kennedy forced the onion halves into Barbara’s hands.

“Hold these to your eyes until I tell you to take them away. If you take them away before that I’ll whip you silly. You got that?” As a sample of the whipping she threatened she whacked the child several times across the shoulders with her fist.

Each day turned into a new kind of horror for Barbara as Mrs. Kennedy sought novel kinds of punishment for house infractions, real and imagined. Finally, after almost a year, Joe Wood came to see Barbara, took one look at her and wanted to know what Mrs. Kennedy had done to her.

“She looks terrible,” Joe Wood said. “What in hell have you been doing to her?”

“I’ve been trying to teach her some manners, that’s what I’ve been doing to her!”

“How? By beating her and starving her?”

“Who says I beat her? She eats what I do. I can’t help it if it don’t show.”

“I know what does show. Brutality, that’s what shows. I’m taking her out of here before you kill her with your kindness!”

“Take her and good riddance. That damned brat tried to poison me one day. She put roach powder in my soup!”

Barbara denied it. She did tell Joe Wood that Mrs. Kennedy made her wash the dishes, sweep the floors, mop them, and do other chores on the promise that if she did them well she would allow her to go out and play.

“She never let me out of the house,” Barbara told Wood. “When I finished doing what she wanted she told me it wasn’t done good and to do it over, and then because I had to do it over she said I had to be punished and so couldn’t go out and play. She beat me too.”

“I ought to kill her,” Joe Wood said.

“That’s right, Daddy. You ought to kill her.”

It was the first time that Barbara had ever heard the word “kill” in reference to a human being, and it may also have been true that she did put roach powder into Mrs. Kennedy’s soup. If that is so then she indicated at that tender age that she had in her makeup a leaning toward planned violence.

Joe Wood took Barbara home, and home was a shack. Hortense, a half-brother and half-sister by Joe Wood lived there with their crippled grandfather, a kindly old gentleman who never understood his daughter and feared her temper. It was during the depression and there was little food in the house. The children were always hungry and cried a great deal. Hortense yelled and swore at them and nothing grandpa could say or do would shut her up. When Barbara was seven, Joe Wood died suddenly. Things really got worse then.

Hortense, still young and attractive, went out every night with different men. She forced Barbara to clean the shack, do all the chores she did while she was living with Mrs. Kennedy. One day she ran away, was found on a street and returned home. She ran away again, and again was brought back home.

Hortense yanked her out of the shack and took her to an orphanage, St. Mary’s of the Palms in San Jose. The sisters were kind and treated her with a great deal of sympathy and understanding. The few months she spent in the orphanage were the only happy memories she had of her childhood.

For some unexplained reason, Hortense took her out of the orphanage and placed Barbara in the Home of the Good Shepherd, a school for incorrigible girls. Barbara stayed there until she was caught sneaking over the wall that kept the girls fenced in. She had wanted to pinch some oranges in a nearby grove.

Instead of reprimanding her in a way a child should have been, they kicked her out of the home, a home that was supposed to straighten kids out who ran away from home.

Back in the shack with grandpa she found a measure of happiness in his kindness and in her school work. Like another young woman whose life ended in violence, Bonnie Parker, Barbara had a leaning for poetry and English literature. She read Oscar Wilde, Walt Whitman, Robert Bums, Shakespeare, and Robert Bridges. She was fourteen and like most girls that age began to take an interest in boys. She was well developed and mature for her age.

Hortense’s mother instinct or a sudden desire to inflict her brand of discipline came to the fore and she refused to allow Barbara to date during all the time she was in high school. No dances, football games, or any other activity.

Fed up with Hortense’s strict discipline, Barbara ran away. She went to San Francisco, where she met a man in his mid-thirties in a bar where she was trying to get a job as a waitress. He made a big pitch for her until he found out she was jail bait.

“Come on,” he said, “I’ll take you home to mother.”

Barbara was certain there was no mother and that she would wind up having her first sex experience. She was broke and hungry and decided that if this was the way it had to be then there was no use fighting it.

To her surprise, there was a mother. The man was an ex-con with a heart. They were good to her, mother and son. But it didn’t last long. Hortense tracked her down with the help of the juvenile authorities. However, she rebelled. She stayed home but she also sneaked out regularly for dates with boys.

The boys made the usual advances and for a while she resisted going all the way. One boy, however, far more mature than the others, a senior in high school with money to spend, bought her gifts because he realized she came from a very poor family and had little or nothing of the things young girls desire and value. He bought her stockings, handkerchiefs, gloves, bits of costume jewelry, and all the time he treated her with the greatest respect, made no advances.

The psychology worked for him. On this night, parked in his car on a hill overlooking the city, he took her in his arms and kissed her tenderly, stroked her hair and told her how lovely she was. His tenderness and carresses thrilled her. Here was someone who liked her, loved her even, wanted her. She gave no resistance to anything he did, and he had his way with her.

It was the beginning. He saw her almost every night for several months. The word spread. Buy her presents and she’ll put out. She soon became one of the most popular girls in the neighborhood. Hortense learned of her escapades and had her committed to the Ventura School for Girls, a state reform school.

The matrons had checked her mother’s background and believed that the daughter was no better or worse and took pains to tell her so. She was told that her mother, according to the records, had spent two years in the school as a delinquent. It had happened when Barbara was two years old. Barbara spent two years in the school and was paroled. The conditions of her parole was that she work at a job and stay home nights. She got a job as a domestic at a paltry wage.

The work was hard. She stuck to it for the eight months of her parole and was discharged from custody. As soon as she received her discharge papers she left town and went to San Diego. This was early in 1940. She worked at various jobs, had a few dates, and then met a mechanic named Harry Kielhammer in a small-time bar.

It was the kind of bar girls and women frequent for the sole purpose of meeting men, and the men feel that any girl who walks into that bar is ready to say “yes” to the big question. Harry Kielhammer, dull, humorless, ordinary, had never hoped to find an attractive young girl like Barbara who would be willing to go along with him. He asked her to marry him and she said she would.

It was an escape from Hortense’s authority. Their marriage was hectic because of Barbara’s frequent excursions to bars and her staying out until the wee hours of the morning after which she refused to explain her whereabouts or actions. She bore Kielhammer two sons, Billy and Darryl.

Soon after, Kielhammer got a divorce. He didn’t want the boys and Barbara couldn’t afford to keep them. They were sent to Kielhammer’s mother in Seattle.

Barbara then began cruising up and down the West Coast, trying to find some place where she would fit, someone who would want her! There was an assortment of men but none of them sought a permanent alliance with her. She wound up back in San Diego. The town was full of sailors eager to spend months of pay on any attractive girl who was willing. She was willing.

She became a “sea-gull” — a gal who follows the fleet. She finally married a sailor named Aloyce Pueschel, just before he shipped out. After Pueschel shipped out she roved from Seattle to Reno; from San Francisco to Los Angeles to Bakersfield, Stockton, and other towns on the Coast. Once she got as far as Chicago, where she obtained jobs as a waitress and a dice girl.

In a bar on North Clark Street and North Avenue she met two “pals” — Mark Monroe and Tom Sittler, a couple of journeymen thieves, robbers, and small-time gunmen. They went for her because she talked like a girl who had been around and knew the score.

“How are you fixed for money, baby?” Monroe asked her.

“Is a girl always fixed for money? There’s never enough, and I’m not giving you a sob story.”

“I’m sure you’re not.” He turned to his friend. “Tom, you think she’s giving us a sob story?”

“Nope. She looks like a right-o to me. Let’s do something for her. Here, I’ll chip in a double sawbuck.”

“Don’t be cheap. Make it half a yard and I’ll match it.”

Tom Sittler handed Monroe fifty dollars and Monroe added his fifty to it and gave it to Barbara.

“You guys were sent from heaven,” Barbara exclaimed. “This will take care of a lot of my troubles.”

“Any time,” Monroe added. “What time do you get off?”

“A little after two. This joint only has a two o’clock ticket. I generally have a bite to eat and then I go home.”

“You tied up with anyone?” Monroe asked.

“Free as a bird.”

“Good. We’ll meet you back here at two. See you.”

They paid her rent, gave her money for clothes, the whole bit. And then on this night they made her a proposition and she went for it.

Monroe said, “We’re convinced you’re a real solid gal, Babs, so we’re going to ask you to help us. We’ll make it worth your while. We need your help bad so we can stay out of the can.”

“Sure, Mark. If I can help I’ll be glad to.”

This was one of Barbara’s weaknesses, agreeing to do something before she weighed the consequences, the danger to herself, the price she would have to pay. It wasn’t that she was gullible nor lacking in intelligence. She was weak in that singular area of giving of herself in order to win someone’s favor, especially if she was wanted or needed.

Mark Monroe said, “We’re wanted in San Francisco. We’re out on bail now for having beaten up and ribbed Sally Stanford, the vice queen out there. You hear of her?”

“No, I don’t think so. Maybe. What do I have to do?”

“We want you to be our alibi, say that you were with us on the day it happened. That’s all.”

“That’s all? Sure, I’ll be glad to do it. Just tell me what to say and I’ll fix it.”

“We’ve got it fixed up with a pal of ours in Frisco. He owns a small hotel. You say you were with us all day at the hotel until midnight. Stick to that story and we can beat the rap.”

“Okay. I’ll stick to it. You can bet on it.”

“Good girl. We’ll give you five bills for your trouble and pay all your expenses. Here’s half of it now.” He handed her two hundred and fifty dollars.

It was a big mistake for her. The cops in Frisco were a lot smarter than she gave them credit for being. They checked her out thoroughly, juvenile record, home record, marriages, and the fact that she was in Chicago on the day she testified that she was in Frisco. The district attorney ripped her to the bone when he took over the cross-examination. She was charged with perjury, sentenced to eight months in jail and placed on five years’ probation.

Probation was a millstone around her neck. She had to have a legitimate job, stay in town, and report to her probation officer every week. She had divorced Aloyce Pueschel, so was free to marry again. She felt that if she married a man who traveled she would be able to leave town on the excuse that she wanted to travel with her husband in order to be near him.

The man she chose was a traveling salesman named Charles Newman. Shortly after their marriage she divorced him and was free to do her thing, go where she wanted. And now she met John Brick, a big, good-looking guy, smooth as silk who carried a lot of money although he worked as a chauffeur for the very rich Dr. Malcolm Hoffman.

Brick put her up in a cozy apartment and they lived in style. It was too good to be true, as most things so far in her life turned out to be. Some time later, Dr. Hoffman was arrested and charged with performing illegal operations. John Brick was arrested with him and charged as an accomplice in procuring clients for Hoffman’s abortions.

Barbara knew that she wouldn’t have a chance in court if she were picked up in Brick’s apartment, not with her record and that five years hanging over her head for violation of probation.

She lammed. Her whole life style was leading her to the inevitable and final experience that would deliver her to the state’s executioner.

Instead of leaving the state, as she should have, she chose to go to Los Angeles instead. It is often this one choice, the single decision, the step taken without calculation that leads one to total disaster or to fame and fortune. The latter was not in the cards for Barbara Graham. Sheer circumstance formed the events that brought her into contact with Emmett Perkins and Jack Santo. First, however, she met the last of her four husbands, Hank Graham, a gentle little guy with a quick smile and an engaging grin which bespoke a sense of humor. It was the most unforgettable milestone along the path that led her to a cell in death row in San Quentin Prison.

It was now the summer of 1950. Barbara was in a restaurant on Broadway, a spot where a lot of sharpies hung out — horse players, small-time bookies, short-con artists looking to make a fast buck. Someone introduced her to Hank Graham. There was nothing about Hank Graham that should have evoked a spark of romance in Barbara unless it was that infectious grin. For the first time in her life she found someone she could truly love.

She said later, “Here at last, I figured, was my chance to go really legitimate and settle down to a sane life. For a time there was nothing or no one that interested me except Hank. We were in a hurry to get married. When we did I was happier than I had ever been in my life, and I thought back to my days at St. Mary’s orphanage when I was five years old. It was wonderful. I thought of trying to get Billy and Darryl, my two little boys, back from Seattle where they were living with Min Kielhammer, their father’s mother.

“I learned quickly that this would be impossible because my beloved mother had informed Mrs. Kielhammer that I had served a year in the penitentiary on a perjury rap. She couldn’t even tell the truth about me on that. Actually it was only eight months, and in a jail, not a penitentiary.

“Things went along well for Hank and me and then I made a terrible discovery. Hank, my little guy with that lovable grin, was a junkie!

“The junk, the Big H, heroin, began to interfere with Hank’s work. He never had enough money left from his pay to take care of the rent, food bills, or other household expenses. We had some violent arguments. I’d get all puffed up and walk out on him. And where would I go? To the spots where the sharp guys hung out, the boys from the so-called underworld.”

One night, after an argument with Hank, Barbara walked out and went to the restaurant where she first met him. She was introduced by a bookie friend to a dapper, sporty little guy with sunken features. He was Emmett Perkins.

Perkins and his partner, Jack Santo, had been involved in at least a half-dozen murders, including the Chester, California massacre of Gard Young and three small children.

Perkins bought her a cup of coffee and they sat at a corner table and talked in low tones.

“I’ve got an undercover gambling set-up out in El Monte, in a private house. If you’ll work as a come-on girl for the house you’ll get a nice cut of the action. You interested?”

“I sure am. When do I start?”

Once again she made a decision on the spur of the moment without weighing the potential consequences. She already had a criminal record. An arrest for violation of the state’s gambling laws would send her back to a prison cell, and because she had a record it would be for the maximum penalty provided by law. Had she weighed this possibility, weighed the potential punishment, the deprivation of her liberty, life in a prison cell, for what she might earn in hard cash, she would have turned it down, said good-by to Perkins and walked out of his life forever.

She didn’t tell her husband of her new job. The first night she went out, all dolled up in her best finery, she said that she was going to a movie. Instead she went to a bar, sat down and ordered a drink.

A girl alone in a bar means only one thing to a man on the make. The men were not long in approaching. The first one looked like ready money. He was obviously married and so couldn’t put up a beef.

“Can I buy you a drink, honey?”

Barbara gave him a small smile. “Okay, if you like. My name is Babs. What’s yours?”

“Uh, John. That’s it, John.” He was a John all right.

After several drinks he popped the twenty-dollar question. Barbara gave him a big smile which told him she was willing, but—

“I know a nice little place where we can have some excitement first. It’s a private gambling place. Could we go there first?”

They could and did. John lost his roll and Barbara lost her interest. She walked out on him while Emmett Perkins delayed him with a talk on how he just didn’t have the dice breaking right for him. Tomorrow would be another day.

That’s the way it went several nights a week. The money she earned went for rent and food, and some of it to keep Hank going with his habit. Things went along this way until Barbara gave birth to Tommy early in March 1953. About this time she and Hank had a knockdown, drag-out fight over her nights out and his jealousy over “Uncle” Emmett, to whom he was introduced as the benefactor who supplied the money for the upkeep of the household expenses.

“What I earn also pays for your damned habit!” Barbara yelled at Hank. “What the hell have you got to be jealous about? I’m not sleeping with Emmett, never have and never will. He’s a means toward an end, that’s all!”

“Yeah, he sure is! If you’re not careful he’ll take you to your end!”

They were prophetic words but Hank didn’t know it at the time. He spoke from anger rather than from suspicion or knowledge of the kind of man Emmett Perkins truly was.

“Okay. But I’ve had it. I’m leaving!”

“Good! That’s the best thing you’ve said since I first met you. And the sooner the better.”

“Right now soon enough?”

“Perfect. Good-by, Hank!”

For the next few days Barbara tried to get in touch with Emmett Perkins but was unsuccessful. She was broke and needed money for food. In desperation, she issued a bum check at a super market. She tried again to get in touch with Perkins and again was unsuccessful, and again she issued a bad check. Things were getting hot for her. She still had the old probation rap hanging over her head and the bad check charge would throw her into prison for a long sentence.

She bundled up Tommy and took him to Mrs. Anna Webb, Hank’s mother. She then packed her clothes and checked into a motel under an assumed name, after which she went looking for Emmett Perkins again. This time she found him. With him was Jack Santo, a big, hulking guy whose morals came from a jungle and his character from the teeth of a tiger.

“I’m hot,” Barbara told them. “I’ve put out a couple of bum checks and unless I make them good the cops will throw me in jail for a long time.”

“How much?” Santo asked.

“Thirty dollars. I’ve got to make them good today or else.”

Santo handed her the thirty dollars. “Here, go pick up the checks and come back here. We’ve got a proposition that will put you on easy street.”

Barbara snatched the money from Santo’s hand and dashed out the door toward the super market to pick up the checks she had issued.

The body of Mrs. Mabel Monohan was discovered on March 11, two days after her murder, by Mrs. Monohan’s gardener, who had noticed the floodlights burning and the front door to the house ajar. He went into the house and what he saw turned his stomach. Only one other victim of gangland’s force had ever died as brutally. She was Estelle Carey, an attractive young woman, the girl friend of Nick Circella, a Capone hood.

The Parkside Avenue home of Mrs. Monohan was dark and quiet on this night of March 9, 1953. Mrs. Monohan was alone in the house. She felt secure. There was a high stone wall around the back yard. Floodlights illuminated both the front and back yards. There was a double bolt and chain on the front door. All the windows were fixed firmly with special locking devices. Her daughter, Iris, divorced from Los Angeles and Las Vegas gambling kingpin Tudor Scherer, fearing for her mother’s safety because the elderly woman lived alone, had seen to it that every device for her safety was provided.

The only thing she had omitted was a caution that her mother never admit a stranger into the house on any pretext. Mrs. Monohan, a kindly person, brought on her violent death because of her faith in human nature.

The facts of the murder, as testified to by several principals and near-principals in the crime, were that on the night of March 9, 1953, a brunette young woman rang the bell of Mrs. Monohan’s home. Mrs. Monohan was reading a mystery story — “The Purple Pony Murder” — and when the bell range she rose from her chair and hobbled to the front door and cautiously opened the peephole, turned on the front porch light and peered through.

“Yes, what is it?” she asked of the young woman at the door.

“My car is broken down in the middle of the intersection and I am unable to get it started. I was wondering if you would be kind enough to let me use your telephone to call a garage?” There was distress in the young woman’s voice.

“All right, dear,” Mrs. Monohan answered, eager to help a young woman in trouble. She unbolted the door.

As the door swung open the young woman and several men overwhelmed her. The young woman smashed the heavy butt of a pistol against the frail woman’s head. It was a vicious blow and Mrs. Monohan reeled backward and let out a high moan.

“My God!” she moaned. “My God! Don’t kill me. Please don’t kill me!”

Several more blows rained on her head and she slumped to the floor unconscious. The young woman found a pillow case and drew it over the fallen victim’s head. One of the men pulled the woman’s hands behind her back and tied them together. It was a useless and senseless gesture because Mrs. Monohan was unconscious and would have remained so for hours.

They weren’t satisfied, however. Another of the men drew a garrotlike noose around her neck and shoved her with his foot. The gang then began a systemtic search of the house, their search centered on a floor safe they believed was somewhere in the home. They found none.

The men and lone woman swore in frustration, made another frantic search of the premises and then left. Why the murder?

Tudor Scherer had lived in Mrs. Monohan’s home when he was married to Iris.

Later, when Iris divorced him, he continued to visit Mrs. Monohan frequently. On these occasions he was seen carrying a small black bag into the Parkside house. It was assumed that the bag contained huge amounts of cash from Scherer’s Las Vegas gambling casinos.

The house was cased by several small-time hoods, none of whom had enough intelligence to come in out of the rain. Among these were Solly Davis, a former Mickey Cohen mobster; Baxter Shorter; Indian George, and William Upshaw. Baxter Shorter contacted Jack Santo and told him of what he had seen.

“You know Scherer, Jack. The guy is loaded. He skims a lot of dough off the top from his gambling joint in Vegas and it’s my guess that the dough is in that house, in a safe. There’s one old lady living there now — Scherer’s mother-in-law. It should be a pushover. All you need to do is get a box-man to crack the safe.”

“How sure are you that Scherer is carrying money into the house in that bag? It could be a few changes of underwear and socks.”

“No, no. He stays in the house about an hour and comes out.”

“With the bag?”

“Yeah, with the bag. And it is empty. I could tell from the way he was holding it.”

“Okay. I’ll look into it. Have you told anyone else about this? Anyone else know about it?”

“Not that I know of. I haven’t talked to anyone else about it. If anyone else has cased the play I haven’t heard of it.”

Shorter lied. He had mentioned it to Indian George and George talked to Solly Davis and William Upshaw about it. That tied all four together as conspirators if not principals in the crime.

Lieutenant Robert Coveney, a smart, tough, honest and vigilant cop, in charge of the investigation of the murder, combed the underworld for some word or clue that would lead him to the killers. He determined to put the human wolf pack who had committed the murder into the gas chamber. He had viewed the chilling sight of the dead woman, the blood-smeared face beaten almost beyond recognition and the memory of it burned his insides.

Indian George read the papers on the story of the murder, the quoted statements of Lieutenant Coveney that teams of detectives were on the case and that they wouldn’t rest until the killers were nabbed, tried, and paid the full penalty for the crime. Indian George was scared. He could be involved. He could go to prison for life, or he might wind up in the gas chamber.

On March 15, one week after the murder, Lieutenant Coveney got the first break of the case. He received a call from Indian George.

“Who were the men that talked to you about robbing the home of Mrs. Monohan?” Lieutenant Coveney asked. His insides were churning with excitement.

“I had nothing to do with this caper, lieutenant,” George said. “You’re not going to hold me, are you?”

“Not if you had nothing to do with it. Who were the men?”

“Well, Baxter Shorter told me about it and I talked to Solly Davis and William Upshaw about it. I don’t know if they were in on it or not. Honest.”

“Okay. I’ll check it out. Baxter Shorter, Solly Davis, and William Upshaw. Anything else you want to tell me? Any little detail you may have overlooked or let slip your memory?”

Indian George hesitated and Lieutenant Coveney noted it. He prompted George again.

“Come on, let’s have it. You’ve gone this far so you may as well go all the way, if you want to stay in the clear.”

Indian George hesitated again for a moment, then said, “After the murder Shorter told me that if I breathed one word to anyone about casing the house—”

“Mrs. Monohan’s house?”

“Yes, sir. He said that if I told anyone about it that he would kill me.”

“All right. Anything else? Don’t leave out anything. I want the whole story, every bit of conversation you may have had with Shorter, Davis or Upshaw.”

“That’s it, lieutenant. Honest. That’s all of it.”

“Okay. You can go. But stick around where I can find you if I should want to talk to you again”

“Yer, sir. Thanks, lieutenant.”

Lieutenant Coveney put out an APB on Shorter, Davis and Upshaw. The three men were picked up and given a thorough grilling. None of the trio would admit knowing anything about the murder. The three men also refused to take lie detector tests. Lieutenant Coveney held them as long as the law allowed and then had to release them. Before he did so he told Baxter Shorter he was walking on thin ice.

“I’m positive you’re involved in this up to your neck. When I prove it you’ll wish you were never born. This is probably the most vicious killing I’ve ever had to work on. It turns my stomach. So do you. You’re a quaking, squirming piece of scum right now and I know it. There’s going to be a tail on your can around the clock just in case. Get out of here. Looking at you makes me want to vomit!”

Mrs. Iris Sowder, Mrs. Monohan’s daughter and Tudor Scherer’s ex-wife, now offered a reward of $5,000 for the apprehension and conviction of her mother’s slayers. Indian George read of it and called Lieutenant Coveney again.

“I thought of something I forgot to tell you, lieutenant. When Shorter talked to me he mentioned a guy named Jack. Just that, Jack. He said the guy was big and tough and would probably do the job. If you break the case on my information, will I get the reward?”

“We’ll see,” Coveney answered and hung up.

The code of the underworld, he thought, and couldn’t stop the involuntary sneer that came to his lips. He turned to one of his men. “Put out an APB on those three lice we had on the Monohan case. We’re going to give them another going over. I want them in separate cells and I want their cells bugged. Let’s move!”

Shorter, Davis, and Upshaw were picked up and tossed into three separate but adjoining cells. Shorter began to worry. Why hadn’t they been questioned? What had the cops found out? Worst of all, he had talked too much to Upshaw and he was afraid that Upshaw would crack and spill his guts. He was right.

Upshaw yelled over to him to come up to the bars of his cell. Shorter did. The two men talked in low tones but every word they said was picked up by the monitor who was listening in. There was excitement in the squad room. A break in the case was coming.

Upshaw suggested to Shorter that they make a deal with District Attorney S. Ernest Roll. “It’s our only out. Either we turn state’s evidence or we’re liable to wind up in the gas chamber.”

“Yeah, but I want our lawyer there when we talk to the D.A. I’ll tell Coveney we want Tom Mercola present or we make no statements.”

“Good, good. That’s the best way.”

On the evening of March 30, in a sort of cloak and dagger setup, a meeting was held in the Miramar Hotel in Santa Monica. Present were Lieutenant Coveney representing Burbank, Chief of Police Rex Andrews, District Attorney Roll, Assistant D.A. Adolph Alexander, and Tom Mercola, attorney for the three men.

Baxter Shorter made a complete statement. Jack Santo, Emmett Perkins, Barbara Graham. He gave their descriptions and the full text of conversations he had had with Jack Santo.

“I met Santo and Perkins in a motel in El Monte on March 7. We looked Mrs. Monohan’s home over the next day, and again on the 9th. We decided to take it that night. We met in a restaurant in Burbank that evening and drove to Parkside Avenue. That’s it.”

“Who is John True?” Lieutenant Coveney asked.

“He’s a box man, a safe cracker. He was supposed to open the safe, if there was one.”

Up to this point Shorter had not mentioned that Barbara Graham accompanied the men to the Monohan home, and his questioners failed to ask him about it, assuming that she had accompanied them. This was the big flaw in the case so far as Barbara Graham was concerned.

John True was picked up and interrogated by District Attorney Roll in presence of two assistants and Coveney. Roll needed True’s testimony to make a case. The law of corroboration.

“If your testimony is corroborative I will recommend absolute immunity. I’m offering you this because you have no previous criminal record.”

True agreed to testify if he were called on to do so. And now the police made a bad mistake. They booked True on a charge of murder, though he had made no statement other than that he would be willing to testify if called upon. True’s attorney got a writ of habeas corpus and Burbank Chief of Police Rex Andrews was forced to release him. The story broke in the papers.

Coveney was certain that Jack Santo and Emmett Perkins would know that someone had talked or John True would not have been picked up, and that someone had to be Baxter Shorter. He ordered protection for Shorter.

He was absolutely right in his assumption. Santo and Perkins tabbed Shorter as the stool pigeon. Their belief was confirmed when the April 14 editions published a resume of Shorter’s confession. It was bye, bye birdie for Shorter.

Shorter and his wife Olivia lived in an apartment house on North Flower Street, in the shadow of the city hall. They were at home watching television before having dinner. Shortly after eight o’clock there was a knock on the door. Shorter answered it. When he opened the door he stared into the barrel of a .38 pistol held by Emmett Perkins. Mrs. Shorter saw Perkins, the gun in his hand, and screamed.

“Get back or I’ll kill you too!” Perkins threatened. He aimed the gun at Mrs. Shorter and Baxter yelled at his wife to get back into the house. She ran back toward the living room and called the police.

She screamed hysterically. “Come quick! They’re going to kill my husband! Hurry!”

Police arrived minutes later but they were too late. Mrs. Shorter could give them no description of the car used to take her husband away. She did know Perkins and identified his photo in the rogues’ gallery. She told Lieutenant Coveney what her husband had revealed to her about the Monohan murder.

“He cried like a baby when he told me how they had beaten her and killed her. He didn’t think they would hurt her, just force her to tell them where the money was hidden.”

Coveney was depressed. Their case seemed to have flown out the window. Their star witness was gone, and very likely dead at this moment, there was nothing to present in court. William Upshaw’s statement covered only the conspiracy aspect. John True had said nothing and probably never would. Solly Davis had said nothing, and would adhere to the code. Coveney and the Los Angeles cops, who had been brought into the case because of Shorter’s kidnaping, fanned the underworld informers for word of the whereabouts of Jack Santo and Emmett Perkins. They also wanted Barbara Graham. The mug shots of the three were in every police station in the city and an APB was out on them.

Days of fruitless searching and talking to countless stoolies brought nothing but sore feet and severe headaches. And then the cops got a break, the big break in the case.

Barbara craved for a fix. The tensions of her life had forced her to find some form of alleviation and she had turned to heroin, the very worst thing she could have done at this stage of the game.

“I’m going into town,” she said to Santo. “I want to get something.”

“We’re hotter than hell, Babs,” Santo replied. “Every cop in town is carrying our mug shots. You’re taking an awful chance of getting busted. Or you may be followed and lead the fuzz right to our door.”

“I’ll be careful, Jack. Don’t worry about it. I know what to do.”

“I hope so.”

Barbara contacted a user and pusher, an old man dying of cancer. He needed money for his habit and to live on. When he saw Barbara he knew he had it. It was right there in his pocket, that $5,000 reward.

“I haven’t got any stuff on me,” he said. “You go to the depot in Huntington Park. A woman will meet you there and give you all you want. How much do you want?”

She named the amount.

“Okay. She’ll have it, but the price went up. The town is hot and all the fuzz is busting everybody in town. Yeah, the town is really steaming.”

“Yes, I know. I’ll be at the depot in an hour. I don’t want to wait around so be sure the contact is there.”

The old man hustled to a phone as soon as Barbara was out of sight and called Detective Chief Thad Brown.

“Yeah, it’s her!” he said excitedly. “I know her! Don’t forget me on the reward. It’s my reward!”

The full force of the police department went into immediate action. Plainclothes detectives, some on foot, some in unmarked cars, policewomen, the whole bit. That’s the big advantage the law has on the lawbreaker — unlimited resources of men, equipment, cooperation of citizens, and many denizens of the underworld who seek protective favor in exchange for information. And so the trap was set and ready to be sprung. The last days of Barbara Graham’s freedom and life began.

Barbara made her buy in the ladies’ room of the depot. The woman who handed over the packets of heroin was a policewoman. She went into a compartment, closed the door, and fixed a pop, pumped it into her arm. She came out and headed for the door leading to a bus stand, got into the bus and sat down. Another policewoman also boarded the bus. Detectives in several cars followed.

Barbara got off the bus almost at the door of the hideout in Lynwood. It was a plain one-story building that had been converted from a store into an apartment and the door leading to it was flush with the sidewalk. A half-dozen teams of detectives headed by Brown, Homicide Captain Bob Lohrman, and Intelligence Captain James Hamilton covered every side of the building, front, sides, and back. Brown gave a signal and a burly detective kicked the door in and about a dozen cops rushed into the room.

Barbara let out a scream. She was standing in the middle of the room, completely naked. Jack Santo grabbed a pair of shorts and drew them on. Emmett Perkins stood against a wall of the room and glared first at Barbara and then at the cops. He saw the whole picture. Barbara had led the cops right to their door. He had told Jack they shouldn’t allow her to leave the apartment but Santo had minimized it.

“But you warned her about how hot we were,” Perkins said after Barbara had left.

“I know. She’s a smart girl, knows how to handle herself!”

“Like hell! No broad does. And this one is on the stuff!”

“You worry too much, Perk. Drop it.”

Newspaper reporters flooded the hall of justice when the three were brought in. Santo and Perkins stared straight ahead as they walked but Barbara bent her head and refused to look up as news photographers snapped pictures. The trio was booked and charged with suspicion of robbery, murder, and kidnaping. Barbara also was charged with the offense of passing worthless checks. She had failed to pick up the checks from the super market with the $30 given her to do so.

The grand jury voted murder indictments against Jack Santo, Emmett Perkins, Barbara Graham, and John True. The district attorney knew he still didn’t have a case he could take to court despite the indictments. He needed direct testimony from an eye witness to the crime. It was hopeless to think that either Santo or Perkins would turn state’s evidence. And equally hopeless to believe that Barbara Graham would sing. She had no voice for it. That left them John True.

“He’s our only chance,” the D.A. said. “We know he’s out in Sausilito.”

“We’ll go get him,” Lieutenant Coveney said. “With enough pressure he just might talk.”

The D.A. put though a call to Inspector Frank Ahearn of the San Francisco Police Department and asked him to arrest True on a charge of murder. Lieutenant Coveney and Robert LaVold of the Los Angeles Police Department flew to San Francisco. They put the heat on True. They grilled him for three days and finally True indicated that he wanted to get off the hook. Free. Clean. No charges of any kind.

“You guarantee me full immunity for turning state’s evidence and I’ll testify. Otherwise, no deal. I’ll take my chances in court. Santo and Perkins won’t tell you the right time, and I don’t think Barbara will either. So what have you got? Also, I want a bodyguard, highest cop you can give me. No rookie. I know Santo.”

“Let me call the D.A. and we’ll give you an answer,” Coveney said. “I’ll be right back.”

Coveney got in touch immediately with District Attorney Ernest Roll and related the terms on which True would agree to testify.

“Okay,” Roll agreed. “We’ve got no case without him. Tell him I said we’ll go along.”

“No good. He wants to hear from you personally.”

“Put him on.”

Lieutenant Coveney put True on the phone and Roll assured him that he would be given full immunity from prosecution and a bodyguard.

“Good enough. You’ve got a deal,” True replied.

Several hours later, Chief Assistant District Attorney Adolph Alexander arrived from Los Angeles and took over the questioning. John True sang like a hungry canary. He related every incident of the planning and murder of Mrs. Monohan. After his statement had been recorded, Alexander and Coveney knew they had the case in the bag. True’s story exactly matched that given by Baxter Shorter and checked out with the statement made by Upshaw. Alexander and Coveney were jubilant.

“We’ve got an airtight case,” Alexander said. He let out a heavy sigh. “Phew! I never believed we’d solve this one, not with those three cookies. Hard as nails!”

The trial of Perkins, Santo and Barbara Graham got under way late in August. Adolph Alexander and J. Miller Leavy teamed for the prosecution. Judge Charles W. Fricke appointed Jack Hardy, an able attorney, to defend Barbara, and Ward Sullivan to defend Santo and Perkins. John True, the accomplice turned witness, was assigned a deputy public defender.

The intensely dramatic trial began with a packed courtroom, with some score of police officers spread throughout the audience, and it was an audience, one that had come to witness a trial that proved to be more sensational than anything like it presented on stage or screen.

Attorney Jack Hardy protested to the court. “I deem this display a highly irregular procedure. It is an obvious intimidation of the defendants and the jury.”

“Considering the elements of this case, and the character of the defendants I dare say we could not hold this trial in Grauman’s Chinese Theatre,” Judge Fricke replied.

There was an outburst of laughter from the crowd and Judge Fricke rapped his gavel for order. “I want to warn you people that this is a court of law in which three defendants are on trial for their lives. I am mindful of the gravity of the trial despite my last statement and if there are any other outbursts I shall clear the courtroom.”

Attorney Hardy protested Judge Fricke’s reply to him. “I consider the Court’s response highly prejudicial and I want the record to show my objection.”

“So be it,” Judge Fricke replied.

While Barbara was in the county jail she struck up a strong friendship with a girl named Donna Prow, a good-looking young brunette who was serving a year on a charge of manslaughter. Barbara was a bisexual girl with strong sexual needs. When she couldn’t get a man she was able to do a switch and find satisfaction with a woman. She wanted cute Donna Prow and was willing to do anything to get her. Donna saw in this friendship a chance to relieve herself of a prison sentence and return to the free world. She led Barbara on.

At one point in their conversation Barbara said that she needed an alibi for the night of March 9, the night of the murder. “Unless I have an alibi I’m going to wind up in the gas chamber.”

Barbara had forgotten her experience with Mark Monroe and Tom Sittler when she was convicted of perjury for her attempt to establish an alibi for the two men. However, she was desperate at this time, facing the greatest crisis of her life and, like a drowning man, she was grasping at any straw that floated by.

Donna said, “I have a friend of mine coming to visit me in a day or so. I’m sure he’ll be willing to help you. I’ll talk to him.”

“Gee, honey, I’ll really appreciate it. If I get off I’ll see to it that you are handsomely taken care of.”

“Sure, Babs. Anything for a friend.”

Donna Prow was no one’s friend. She was strictly out for herself. She was acquainted with Lieutenant Coveney and sent word to him that she had something important she was sure he’d be interested in. Coveney came immediately. Donna told him of her conversation with Barbara. Lieutenant Coveney nodded.

“I’ll take care of this. Thanks, Donna.”

“What about me, lieutenant? Will you try to get my time cut if this works out? I want to get out of here!”

“I’ll do whatever I can, Donna. I’m sure I can arrange it with the D.A. and the judge.”

Coveney arranged to have an undercover agent pose as Donna’s boyfriend. The man he sent was Samuel Sirianni, a handsome, dark-haired young police officer.

Sirianni visited Barbara at the county jail. He had a small miniphone strapped to his chest and under his coat so that it was invisible to Barbara.

“What can I do for you?” Sirianni asked. “I’m told you need help. I’m here to help you because you’re a friend of Donna’s.”

Barbara was taken by the handsome young man before her and thought of how nice it would be if she were freed and got together with him. She suggested as much and Sirianni smiled a willingness.

“I want you to tell me everything that happened so that when I get on the stand to testify for you I won’t be caught in a lie. Now, from what you’ve said so far, I want to know if this Upshaw guy was with you that night.”

“Oh, no, I don’t know him. Never saw him.”

“What about Baxter Shorter?”

“Don’t worry about him. He won’t be at the trial.”

“Do you know that as a fact that he won’t be there?”

“I can only assure you he won’t be there. If I wasn’t sure he wouldn’t be there, I wouldn’t say so.”

“You were with Perkins, Santo. True, and Baxter that night, weren’t you? Now listen, I want to know everything down the line. This may be our last meeting.”

“I’ll speak to my attorney.”

Sirianni was insistent. “Perkins, True, Santo and Baxter, that’s what I want to know, if you were with those four guys the night of the Monohan thing when everything happened at that place.”

“Yes, I was with them.”

“Now, then, where did this murder take place? When I get on the stand I want to know everything so I can say where we were that night.”

Barbara became nervous at the line of questioning and changed the subject. She said she would like him to see a motel clerk in Encino to fake a registration for the night of last March 9, the date of the murder. “We can use the name of Mr. and Mrs. J. J. Clark of San Francisco.”

“We’ve got to get this straight. I don’t want to make an ass of myself in court because the $500 I’m getting for this is just chicken feed.”

“I was under the impression I was going to pay you more.” Here Barbara laughed lightly at the suggestion of the favors she promised. Sirianni ignored the remark.

There was more to their conversation, all of it damning to Barbara. She reiterated the fact that Shorter would not be at the trial and when pressed for assurance declared that “he’s been done away with. He won’t be at the trial.”

Assistant state’s attorney lost no time in getting the trial under way. He called for his star witness, John True, after the court granted his move to dismiss the murder indictment against True. The tall, husky deep sea diver came into the courtroom surrounded by nine police officers and walked to the witness stand without looking at any of the defendants. They all ignored him.

True’s testimony, from start to finish, regarding the murder and robbery that backfired into a tragic and senseless death of an innocent and crippled old woman shocked the packed courtroom. There was an unmistakable aura of horror over the assembled crowd as True continued his testimony.

“Mr. True,” Alexander asked, “on the ninth day of March, 1953, did you go to the Monohan home?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Who accompanied you?”

“Jack Santo, Emmett Perkins, Barbara Graham, and Baxter Shorter.”

“Who gave instructions?”

“Jack Santo.”

“Did you observe if Barbara had a gun at the time?”

“I didn’t at that time, no.”

Previously, True testified that Emmett Perkins had given him a gun. “I didn’t dare refuse to take it. I went in the door after Barbara entered and I saw her hitting Mrs. Monohan in the face with a gun. Mrs. Monohan was begging for mercy.”

“What did you do?”

“I grabbed the lady by the face. Well, Barbara had been hitting her with a gun and Mrs. Monohan was begging for mercy. She was groaning all the time. I asked Barbara not to hit her any more. Mrs. Monohan collapsed then.”

“What happened then?”

“First Barbara pulled a pillow case over the lady’s head and Perkins tied her hands behind her back and said, ‘Let’s get her away from the door.’ I had her head lying in my lap and I held her head off the floor and we dragged her around the corner and put her in a closet, and I said. ‘Don’t put her in there.’ I took my knife — this pillowcase was over her head — and I cut the case across where she could breathe. Everyone else was going through the house, opening doors and rummaging through the house, and Jack Santo came by with some kind of cloth and tied it around her neck real tight and told me to get looking for a safe. I looked around and couldn’t find anything but a floor furnace and a disposal unit. I then went into the kitchen and saw Santo there. Mrs. Monohan was moaning and I believe it was Shorter said, ‘I will stop that racket,’ or something to that effect.”

“What did you do next?”

“I went back into the hall and cut the straps around her face.”

“Did you do anything with the pillowcase?”

“Yes, I did. I cut holes in it. I tore it open so she could breathe.”

Alexander walked dramatically to the counsel table, picked up two blood-matted white cloths and showed them to True. The cloths were clipped at either end. True identified them as the ones he had cut from the body of Mrs. Monohan. He also identified other items used to cover Mrs. Monohan’s head and to bind her.

The defense hammered at True savagely, at this pack of lies he recited under oath. They tried to shake his story that he went with the mob only to steal money and not to inflict injury on anyone, least of all an old, crippled woman. Defense Attorney Ward Sullivan was exceptionally vicious in his attack on True’s story.

“You stated that you wanted to quit and run after you saw Barbara beating Mrs. Monohan, is that correct?”

“Yes, that’s correct.”

“Then why didn’t you run? Why didn’t you turn around and run? Run right out of the house?” Sullivan roared.

“Because I was afraid! If you had been in my place, you wouldn’t have walked out either. Not and lived to get to the door!”

Sullivan then attacked True on the fact of his pandering his testimony for immunity. “You received immunity for payment for your testimony, did you not?”

“Yes, sir.”

“If you hadn’t received immunity, would you still have been willing to cleanse that dark heart of yours and testify as to the events of the night of March 9?” There was deep scorn in Sullivan’s voice.

There was an immediate objection by Assistant D.A. Alexander which Judge Fricke overruled.

“You haven’t answered my question!” Sullivan persisted.

True fidgeted in his seat and wet his lips with his tongue. He found Jack Santo staring at him with cold eyes and turned his head. There was a weighty silence in the courtroom and only the ticking of the clock on the wall could be heard as the silence continued.

Sullivan took several steps toward the witness stand, stared at True for several seconds.

“No more questions,” he spat out and turned away. He glanced at the jury and shook his head in an expressive gesture of disgust.

William Upshaw followed John True to the witness stand. He had backed out of the robbery because, for one reason, he feared to get involved with Santo and Perkins. He repeated the same story he told police in April and May when he was questioned after the kidnaping of Baxter Shorter. Sullivan and Jack Hardy, the two defense attorneys, made short work of Upshaw. They riddled him full of holes and exposed him as a cheap hoodlum who would sell his own mother for the price of a meal and a drink.

The most dramatic, and sensational, testimony came next when Samuel Sirianni was called to the stand. As he walked past the counsel table Barbara’s icy aplomb failed and her face turned white. She knew instantly that she had been tricked by Donna Prow. Whatever hope she had entertained to win an acquittal up to that moment deserted her.

Sirianni related his meeting with Barbara in the county jail and the conversation he had with her which, he stated, was recorded. As Sirianni testified, Santo and Perkins glared at Barbara with evil hatred. Santo whispered across the counsel table to her.

“You damned stupid bitch!”

Barbara turned her head to hide the sudden tears that flooded her eyes. She realized at that moment that all her life she had permitted herself to be used, that it was her gullibility, a weakness often born of desperation to save herself from the pits of her own making, that drew her into deeper hells.

Attorney Jack Hardy was dismayed. He made a valiant attempt to recover some ground for Barbara and fought gallantly for her. He was sick at heart at the sudden turn of events. He rose to address the Court.

“Your Honor, I have instructed my client from the outset to level with me at all times, to always tell me the truth and not to conceal anything from me. I feel at this moment that I have been thrust into an untenable situation as concerns my defense of my client. I respectfully ask the Court, because of what has occurred, to allow me to withdraw from this case as attorney for defendant Barbara Graham.”

“Denied,” Judge Fricke said cryptically. “You will continue with your defense, to the very best of your talents and ability as is due the defendant. Court is recessed for one hour.”

Hardy’s motion to withdraw from the case injured Barbara more than if Hardy assumed the position of a witness and testified that Barbara had admitted the murder to him. The several newspapermen in the courtroom glared at him as he walked by. They had noted the jury’s reaction and felt that Hardy’s speech was the grossest kind of misconduct for an attorney defending a client in a capital crime.

Hardy took over the defense ably after court resumed but he knew he was fighting a losing battle. Barbara knew it. Jack Santo and Emmett Perkins knew it.

Barbara’s alibi witnesses were gored. Her estranged husband, Henry, was dissolved into dirty little crumbs under the scathing cross-examination by Adolph Alexander.

He testified that he had a violent argument with Barbara on the night of March 9, but it was proved by unemployment records that he had actually left home on March 7, and that he did not see Barbara again for several weeks after. The defense was falling apart, bit by bit.

A fourteen-year-old neighbor, Connie Perez, testified that she had heard Barbara and her husband quarreling violently on the night of March 9. Alexander proved she was mistaken and impeached her testimony by producing records of the General Hospital, signed by two different ambulance drivers, that Connie had been picked up at 7:00 A.M. for treatment of her polio condition and that she had been returned to her home after 9:00 P.M.

Barbara then took the stand in her own defense. She testified that she had tried to establish the false alibi because she could not “remember where I actually was the night of the murder. I do know that I was not in Burbank, and certainly at no time have I ever been at or seen the home of Mrs. Monohan.”

Alexander cross-examined her in a tone of light contempt, grinned when she responded to his questions to indicate he was aware they were falsehoods. He was almost gallant in his treatment of her, assuming the role of a man who knows he is talking with a doomed young woman.

Emmett Perkins called his wife and sister to testify in his defense. They both stated that Emmett had been planting a tree in the yard of their home on March 7, and so could not have been in El Monte on March 7.

A dental nurse took the stand and testified that Perkins had an appointment at her office the morning of March 10, and so he could not have been a fugitive eluding the police.

Jack Santo called his common-law wife to the stand, who stated that Santo could not have been in Burbank on the night of March 9, because he was with her in Grass Valley. Her appearance on the witness stand was the biggest mistake of her life.

After she had left the stand another witness, Jack Fumeaux, a Modesto truck salesman, testified that he knew Harriet Henson intimately, and that she was with him one morning when she laid out a plan for an alibi that would place Jack Santo out of the vicinity of Burbank on the fateful night of the murder.

“I had contacted the attorney general’s office,” Furneaux stated, “and I as given a miniphone recorder to wear when I talked with Miss Henson. (It was the same type of instrument Sirianni wore when he talked with Barbara.) I recorded our entire conversation, and during our conversation Miss Henson admitted to me that Jack Santo and Emmett Perkins had killed a Nevada City gold miner, Ed Hanson, during a robbery in 1951, and that Miss Henson had taken part in the robbery and murder.”

That was the end of Santo’s chances for acquittal. As Harriet Henson attempted to leave the courtroom she was arrested by Sheriff Wayne Brown of Nevada City on a murder warrant.

It took the jury only five hours of deliberation to find a verdict of guilty for all three defendants. The foreman of the jury handed the slip of paper with the jury’s verdict on it to Clerk Cecil Luskin who read it in a somber voice.

“We the jury find Jack Santo guilty of murder in the first degree with no recommendation for mercy.” It was the same for Emmett Perkins. And the same for Barbara Graham.

Barbara’s icy composure melted when the verdict was read and she broke into violent sobbing. Later, in the county jail visiting room, she was faced with a dozen reporters and cameramen.

“How do you feel about the verdict, Barbara?” a reporter asked.

“I just can’t believe it,” she replied tearfully. “I just can’t believe it.” She refused to answer further questions or to pose for pictures.

Jack Hardy was relieved of his duties as defense counsel for Barbara after receiving the thanks of Judge Fricke for “serving at great expense and personal sacrifice.”

Al Matthews, a noted trial lawyer, now came into the case on the automatic appeal. He made an emotional appeal for a new trial and referred to Judge Fricke as the 13th juror. He was severely scolded by Judge Fricke, who turned down the appeal.

Matthews, widely known for his violent opposition to the death penalty, fought the appeal through the California Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court. He was turned down in each instance.

Santo and Perkins were removed to San Quentin’s death row and Barbara was taken to the Corona State Prison for Women to begin her long wait.

Through two long years in Corona’s solitary confinement cell Barbara never ceased protesting her innocence of the Monohan murder. All appeals having failed, Judge Fricke set the date of execution for June 3, 1955.

The execution was agonizingly delayed on several occasions and the delays nearly ended capital punishment in California. She made two statements to the press before going to her death. One, to Eddy Jo Bernal of the Los Angeles Herald-Express, in which she said:

“I am ready to die. If it is God’s will that I die then I shall go to my death with no malice towards anyone. I’ve always had pride and dignity, and I hope I will go to the gas chamber with my head held high. I am at peace with myself and God. Death would be a relief from this hell!”

Her other statement was made to a matron. She said, “My downfall was the love of beautiful clothes, jewels, furs, and fancy cars. I have done many things to get them but not murder. And I don’t feel that I have been a really bad person.”

As the hour approached for her execution Barbara still insisted she was innocent. She refused to see Lt. Jack McCreadie of the Los Angeles homicide detail, who had been hoping to get some last-minute information from her on the disappearance of Baxter Shorter.

At 9:05 p.m. two petitions for writs in behalf of Barbara were filed with the Supreme Court. Fifteen minutes later, Governor Knight ordered a delay in the execution to give the court time to consider the petitions.

By this time Barbara was fully dressed in the neat suit she had worn during her trial. Her makeup had been carefully applied and her dark hair was neatly combed. Her only jewelry was her wedding band and a pair of glittering rhinestone earrings.

Barbara was told of the postponement at 9:25. She had been waiting tensely in her cell with the chaplain, Father Edward Dingberg, and Father McAlister. Her spirits rose as the execution time came and went and she hoped against hope that no news was good news.

One more postponement followed and Barbara cried out in the deepest kind of anguish. “Why do they torture me like this! I want to die! Let’s get it over with!”

The final word came at last. All motions denied. Warden Teets then set the time for Barbara’s execution at 10:45. She let out a deep sigh and resigned herself to death.

She walked with firm steps toward the gas chamber, her head held high. She managed to smile weakly in reply to Warden Teets’ farewell, “Good-by and God bless you.” And then she walked into the gas chamber.

She spoke her last words to the chaplain as the guards blindfolded her, and as the stethoscope on her chest was connected to the gauge outside the chamber and the straps placed around her thin body, she repeated the “Ave.”

A guard asked her if the straps were too tight. She shook her head. The last guard gave her a friendly pat on the shoulder and whispered, “Count to ten and take a deep breath.”

The eyes of the newspapermen who stood five feet from the windows of Barbara’s tomb were fixed on her body and face. They saw her lips move in prayer, watched her cling to life for a few seconds more as her lips closed tightly, and then she opened her mouth and let out her soul.