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You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them. Gasey Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK. Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with Your host journalist and author Dan Zupanski.
Good Evening the incredible story of a nineteen fifty eight murder that ended with the last woman to ever be executed in California, a murder so twisted it seems ripped from a Greek tragedy. Deborah Larkin was only ten years old when the quiet calm of her California suburb was shattered. Thirty miles north. On a quiet November night in Santa Barbara, a pregnant nurse named Oga Duncan disappeared from her apartment.
The mystery deepens when it is discovered that Oga's mother in law, a deeply manipulative and deceptive woman, had been doing everything in her power to separate Olga and her son Frank, prior to Oga's disappearance, from a forged a noment to multiple attempts to hire people to get rid of Oga, to a faked extortion case. Elizabeth seemed psychopathically attached to her son, yet she denied having anything to
do with Oga's disappearance with a smile. But when Ogo's brutally beaten body is found in a shallow grave, apparently buried alive, a young da makes it his mission to see that Elizabeth Duncan is brought to justice. Adding a wrinkle to his efforts is the fact that Frank, himself a defense attorney, maintained his mother's innocence to the end. How does a young girl process such a crime along with the fear and disbelief that rocked an entire community.
Decades later, Larkin is determined to revisit the case and bring the story of Oga herself to light. Long overshadowed by the sensationalism and scandal of Elizabeth and Frank, A Lovely Girl seems to reveal Oga as a woman in full, someone who was more than the twisted family that would ultimately ensnare her. As we follow the heart pounding drama of the case through Larkin's young eyes, her father was
the court reporter. A Lovely Girl is page turning yet poignant, and makes the reader re examine how we handle fear, how we regard mental illness, and how we understand family. As we carve our own path in a dangerous world. The book that we're featuring this evening is A Lovely Girl, The tragedy of Olga Duncan and the trial of one of California's most notorious killers, with my special guest author Deborah Larkin. Welcome to the program, and thank you very
much for this interview. Deborah Larkin, thanks for having me. Thank you so much, and congratulations on this extraordinary book.
Thank you.
Let's start off right away with venture at California in nineteen fifty eight, and tell us about your family. I said in the introduction that you were ten years old at that time in nineteen fifty eight. Tell us about your family and how you came to be the author of this book.
My family lived in a small subdivision was built in a walnut orchard. My father was a newspaper reporter and very much a character and well known in the community. My mother was a psychiatric social worker at Cameria State Hospital, which was a California State mental hospital. And I, at ten years old, was in some ways precocious. I read everything in the newspaper, and most of all, I was
a big warrior. And so when Olga's bought. When Olga disappeared and then her body was discovered, I became obsessed with this crime and wondering how this could possibly happen. That was sort of my worst nightmare, for someone to disappear into the middle of the night and then the body found in a shallow grave near my home.
Tell us about your dad's career and the relationship you for especially over this case.
Well, I always was a daddy's girl. I was interested in everything he did, and he was, like I said, he was a newspaper reporter for the local paper, and he was assigned to cover this tragedy from the time Oga disappeared, through the investigation, through the trial of her killers, and so I felt that I could get inside information for him and from him. And so besides reading all
of his columns, I asked a lot of questions. And also I would describe my father as having no filter, so nothing was really out of bounds for him as far as discussions at home, and he used to talk about Olga Duncan's disappearance and all the things that happened afterwards, right around the dinner table.
Let's get to November seventeenth, nineteen fifty eight. In Santa Barbara. Olga Duncan is pregnant and she has a party with two of her work friends from the hospital. Tell us who Olga Duncan is, where she works and about this night in particular November seventeenth, nineteen fifty eight.
Olga at that time was a surgical nurse at Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara. I got the title of the book a lovely Girl because that's how she was described, especially her her Landlady first brought it up. But everybody had nothing but wonderful things to say about Olga, that she was just a lovely girl. And at the time she disappeared, she was separated from her husband, Frank Duncan, who was a criminal defense attorney in Santa Barbara. Frank had moved home to live with his mother because his
mother was really just obsessed with her son. She was also insisted that she could never live alone, and she just harassed Frank until he finally left his wife and moved home to live with her. And that was only like a few weeks after the wedding. He didn't live a full time with Olga for any time at all. And he also, I think he said that he thought that if he could wait till the baby was born, that maybe everything would be fine, that his mother would
be reconciled with the situation. But at the time she harassed Olga. She said terrible things to people about Olga. She tried to get the stores in Santa Barbara to cut off any credit for Olga. She was just She showed up at the apartment where Olga lived and got the landlady to let her in, to go inside the apartment, and she tried to tell the landlady that they weren't really married, that Olga was a terrible person and had
abandoned children in Canada. And that's another thing. Olga had moved to Santa Barbara from Canada the year before because there was a nurse shortage in California and she thought that that would be someplace that she would enjoy living, and so she got the job in Santa Barbara.
Now what happens with the That evening she was talking to her friends and you talked about these apartments. There was a Missus Barnett that was the landlady, and she had experienced those things with Olga's mother in law. But that night she met with some friends and then they left. The landlady thought that something else had happened a little bit later in the evening, tell us about what the landlady heard a little bit after those friends had left.
Well, she heard footsteps on the stairs, but she thought that it was Frank leaving. She wasn't at that time, really didn't really realize that Frank had pretty much moved out of there, because he did come sometimes to visit Olga. So when she heard the footsteps on the stairs, she just thought it was Frank going out for cigarettes, she said, And she actually mentioned this to another tenant. She also said that she thought maybe it was another tenant, a couple,
a young couple that sometimes went to the movies. She thought it might have been them also, But once she talked to the tenant, they hadn't gone out at all, and so that concerned her.
These nurses that worked with her were concerned. And so then there was a missing person's rea. And then you introduce a couple characters, Detective Jim Hanson and somebody that's even more important character in this story, Detective Charlie Thompson. What happens? What did they hear immediately about particulars of this case and they speak to Frank Duncan.
Yes, they the first day they were still thinking, well, maybe she just took off. Frank said that she might have done this to get back at him for not living at the house. But they also heard from the landlady that day that the missus Duncan, the mother Elizabeth Duncan, was harassing Olga and hated her daughter in law and had threatened that she would kill her daughter in law. So Frank when they interviewed him, Frank was actually there
when Olga was reported missing. She was over at the apartment and talked to the detectives and told them that he thought she just you know, disappeared on her own and that she'd be back. But he also said his mother never did say any of these things, So Frank was very much trying to downplay everything when Olga disappeared. He didn't feel that it was that anything had happened to her and denied that his mother had made threats.
They found the police found that her purse was still in the apartment. What else led them to believe that maybe she hadn't run off.
Well, the apartment was left, the lights were on, the dishes from the refreshment that she'd served to her two nurs friends that night were still just sitting there on the counter. And also the bed was turned down, but it had not been slept in, so that made them think that possibly she had left in the middle of the night. She had two cases of luggage that Frank insisted were gone, but that was sort of contradictory to
the purse still being there. And that was one of the things that Detective Hanson thought right from the beginning, was that he doesn't know any women that would go off and leave their purse behind, so that made him wonder. And then when they started interviewing Olga's friends, the nurses at the hospital and called her family in Canada, they learned that Olga had been fearful of her mother in law and that missus Elizabeth Duncan had been harassing her, wanting her to leave her her son alone.
And meanwhile, as you say, Frank seems to have denied anything like that, that his mother would be capable of anything like that, and that's what they have to deal with moving forward. Meanwhile, you write that November twenty first, in Santa Barbara, California, Gus Baldonado and his buddy Lewis Moya is with Esperanza Esquibel, owner of the Tropical Cafe in bar what's happening that day and what are they discussing?
Well, in that chapter they are meeting up. They say they drive Missus Escoval to a drive in restaurant in Santa Barbara and she is there to collect money. We discover now during that scene we don't know exactly what she's collecting the money for, but she meets with Missus Duncan at the restaurant and Missus Duncan tries to give her a two hundred dollars check, which Missus Askerbaal says no. No. Lewis Moya, she's there representing them, says no, checks has
got to be cash. So that leads to sort of a wanderer down State Street in Santa Barbara. First meeting with Lewis Moya and Gus Baldonado at the Woolworths and she tries to get them to take the check, and finally Louis Moya does agree. He's not happy about it, but he wants to go on a vacation. His parole officers told him he can leave town, so she goes over and cashes the check at a bank, and then
that was Lewis's idea. And then they meet again at another store in Santa Barbara, and that's where she turns over part of the money. But Missus Tuckan did not want to give the whole two hundred dollars, so she keeps fifty for herself and gives the rest to Lewis.
But there is a much bigger financial deal that is supposed to culminate the next week. You tell us about what she tells them.
Right, Lewis says, they apparently have asked for a lot more money than two hundred dollars, And Missus Duncan says that she is going she calls it Frisco in the next week and selling some of her stock certificates. And these men are not well, not very sophisticated about those kinds of things, so she just kind of says what she wants about how she will be getting that money.
And because she is going to give them the full six thousand dollars, she says, they have agreed that they will take this partial payment.
Now, meanwhile, you have Detective Hanson is interviewing Frank Duncan and I think he understood that Frank's mother was supposed to accompany Frank to this police station interview, and so he asked, Frank, where is your mother? Tell us about this in the between them.
Well, the reason why Frank is going to bring his mother to the police station is because when Missus Duncan got home that day after you know, giving money to Lewis and Gus, he wants to know where that check is because it was supposed to go to pay for a typewriter that he had bought, and she can't come
up with a receipt or the check or anything. So she decides to say She tells him that she has been blackmailed and that she had to give the two hundred dollars to these two men that work at the Esperanza Escovaal's cafe because Frank had actually represented mister Escovall in a criminal case and Missus Eskovall was not satisfied with the outcome. Her husband had to go to jail.
And so that's what Missus Duncan tells her son, that she's being blackmailed by these people because mister Escovall went to jail. So that's when Frank then says, well, he first he wants to go over to the Tropical Cafe and take care of this himself. He thinks it's ridiculous and he's furious, and she begs him not to that they'll kill him, that they threaten to kill the both of them if they don't get money back, and so Frank insists that they go to the police department and
he takes his mother there. But at first, when Frank goes in to sit down with Detective Hanson, his mother isn't with him. She's sitting in the car because she doesn't want to go in. She doesn't like police, and she doesn't want to go into the police station with her son. She wants him to just tell them about it.
Well, that won't work with police, so they have her come in. They suggest that if she has seen these people that have threatened her, well, then she will be able to identify them. What about that idea that she will be able to identify them and a line up and to look at some photos. Is she warmed to that idea at all?
No, No, She claims that she was so afraid when she was approached. She just happened to be walking by the cafe. And they grabbed her and pulled her in that she was so afraid that she really can't remember what they looked like, and she's insisting that she wouldn't be able to identify them.
They suggest that they will put a listening device on her phone, so she again is kind of hesitant to to help out police. But Frank is seriously considering putting the tap on the phone. He's in agreement, isn't he correct?
Yes, he really prods his mother that we have to do this. We're not going to pay blackmailers, and so yes, he tells the police that they will have it on their phone.
So what happens as moving forward with this investigation, Well.
Missus Duncan doesn't seem to be able to record it. She claims that the listening device won't work, but that the callers did call in Augustine Moya called another time and she did pay them a little bit more money. But Frank is very very annoyed with his mother because it's a very simple procedure to do, but she claims it just won't work.
So what about this lineup and about her reluctance to think that she can confidently identify these people? Well, what's Frank's reaction.
Well, Frank, they're in that room looking through the other side of the two way mirror to see the people in the lineup, and she claims at first know that she doesn't see anybody, she doesn't recognize anybody, and Frank just gets in her face and said, come on, mother, oh, because she has already she eventually did pick mug shot out. Frank kept prodding her and prodding her. She picked a mug shot out. They brought the guy in, and when she sees in the lineup, she says, no, no, his
hair's not right. That's not the guy. And Frank is really angry and gets in his mother's face and says, you know you recognize him, mother, You see him. He was one in the mugshot. And at that point the detective kind of intervenes and says, no, please, mister Duncan, You've got to leave her alone. She needs to make
this investigation or this identification. But she's still him and haunted, and Frank goes at him again, and this time the detective disc is quiet because he is thinking that this extortion case is not going to go anywhere, and by that time they've already started to suspect that it is somehow linked to Olga's disappearance. So he decides to just let Frank, you know, say whatever he wants to his mother,
and so after that she's sticking with it. She doesn't recognize anybody, and so when they leave that room and they go to a different part of the police station, Frank suggests that they should bring the number I forget it was number four, whoever it was that he thinks it is in the room for Missus Duncan to meet to see if she can identify him. And the two detectives talk and this is highly irregular, but they think, well, we'll just take it and see where it goes. They've
sort of given up on the extortion case. And so they bring Lewis Moya in and he tries to shake hands with both of them, and Frank won't shake his hand, and again she says, no, no, this is not the guy.
And when they take Lewis Moya away, she Frank just goes ballistic and he's saying, you know, that's the man that you saw in those mugshots, and this point she finally says, well, he just looks like such an innocent little lamb, I just don't like Prison's a terrible thing, and I wouldn't want anybody to have to be there. And so at that point, Frank says, I'm leaving tonight, mother, I'm going to I'm going to go and live. I'm leaving you if in the apartment, if you can't identify
this man. And again the detectives know, well, this isn't going to stick for the extortion case, but they just let, you know, let it go and see what happens. And she finally says, okay, yeah, that's the guy, but I'm not going to testify against him. And if I do, the other man is still at large or you know, he's still and he will kill us and we should be afraid that he will kill us. So then the textors say, okay, well, we're done investigating the extortion case.
But they're of course realize that this is possibly linked. Those two men could possibly be linked to the disappearance, because they have come to believe that Missus Duncan is involved in her daughter in law's disappearance, but they have no evidence, and so they decide to just keep moving with it in that direction.
There was a woman, a very important character that is introduced. You introduced. It's an older woman, she's eighty three or eighty four years old, and her name is Emma Short, and she is with Betty Duncan Elizabeth Duncan, and so the police think, well, maybe we should interview this woman. And of course not to raise arouse suspicion, but when they say we'd like to speak to your friend, of course Missus Duncan says, you don't need to talk to her.
She doesn't know anything, you don't need to talk to her. So they go talk to her. What does Emma Short have to say?
Well, yes, they live in the same apartment building. Emma lives downstairs, Missus Duncan lives in the upstairs apartment just above, so she kind of keeps an eye on Emma. And so they decide to have to both go to the apartment building. A Detective Hanson goes upstairs to talk to missus Duncan and try to work out things with that listening device that she's having trouble with that's just to keep her busy. And Detective Thompson goes to see Emma and at first she just doesn't want to say anything.
She's very afraid, but she is like I would call a sidekick. She goes everywhere with Missus Duncan, so she's been a witness to all that has been going on. And so finally Detective Thompson convinces her that she needs to tell them what happened, and Emma says she's afraid that Missus Duncan does things to people who cross her, but Thompson convinces her that they will protect her, so they leave to go to the Santa Barbara police station to have a real interview with missus short and little
at a time. When they're there, she tells them about the the extortion case, that she made that up about that because she had to tell them something about the checks. She lets them know that there was a phony andnlment that Missus Duncan try impersonated her her daughter in law and got another guy to play Frank. That she went to get their marriage galed, and then when that didn't work, she started looking shopping around, as they've said, for someone to get rid of Olga.
Now, how do they get to back to Esperanza Escoval and the names Lewis Moya and Gus Baldonado come to police's attention.
Well, it actually at first is not through Missus Escoval. I mean, she doesn't tell them the names right away. But when they see that, they know that Lewis Moya, who was finally identified in one of the mugshots and was in the lineup, They know that he hangs out at the Tropical Cafe, and so they decide that they're going to talk to missus who absolutely at first denies that she was upset with her her husband's legal representation.
There was no blackmailing, no anything. But once Missus Short starts to talk, she says that Lewis Moya and she can't really remember Gus's name, she calls him Gus Baldo. So then they go back and they talk to Missus Eskivall.
They bring her into for questioning. After Missus Short has sort of spilled the beans, they bring Missus Eskovall in for questioning and she tells how Missus Duncan came looking for somebody to help her get rid of her daughter in law and that she introduced them to Lewis Moya and Gus Waldonado.
Now with this information, the police have to make a decision on how to conduct themselves. Most effectively so many times, and in this particular case, they look for ways to arrest them without revealing what the actual charges are in this particular cases conspiracy to murder. Tell us how they go about that with these two persons.
Well, Lewis Moya was on probation. He had recently got out of state prison before he came to Santa Barbara, so he had broken some of the terms of his probation just by hanging out at the Tropical Cafe with Baldinado because there were other ex felons there and actually driving a car while you were on probation was something
that you weren't allowed to do. So they arrested Lewis Moya on probation violations and put him in the Santa Barbara jail, and then Gus Baldonado in their investigation of him. He had three children for three children too had just recently been born, and he never paid any child support. Well, in nineteen fifty eight, you could actually be jailed for failure to pay support, and they got his. It was an ex wife at that point, even though he fathered
those two new children. She did file the complaint. They pressured her to do that. So they picked up Augus Baldonado on failure to support charges and he was put in the Ventura jail because that's where his ex wife lived, was in Ventura County. And then they started to interview them.
Okay, so they get to the interviews. What did they realize again about weaklink? How they're going to approach them, who to approach, who has decided that is the weak link and why? And then how do they approach him? How do they get confession from them?
Well, I think maybe I'd like to talk a little bit about that phony and noment as Missus Duncan was arrested at the same time as all of this. So once they got the information from Missus Short about her getting this phony and Noma for her son and Oga by impersonating Oga and getting somebody to impersonate Frank, they decided that they sent people down to Ventura, which is
where she went. She went to Ventura County across the Santa Barbara line to get this phony and Noma because she was too afraid that people in the courts would know Frank. And so once they did they got that information, they realized that they would need to talk to the Ventura County District Attorney who was Gustison, Roy Gustison, and to get him to file a complaint for the arrest
of Missus Duncan. So she was also in jail in Ventura and on the charges of forgery for forging things and that a moment, so they're all three in jail and so now with the weak link, Thompson, Detective Thompson is sent to the preliminary hearing of Missus Duncan on this forgery charge in case he needs to give testimony because the DA in Santa Barbara does not want Missus
Duncan let out on bail. He's afraid at this point she is going to run if she gets out on bail when she knows they've arrested Mooyan and Baldon Autumn two and so after the hearing and Missus Duncan is held over on a very high amount of bail that she can't you know, wouldn't be able to come up with the money to pay, Thompson goes up to gustuson office and they talk about who would be the week link. And here's where Roy Gustison comes in. This isn't really
a crime that happened in his county. He is the Ventura DA and it happened at kidnapping at least disappearance was in Santa Barbara. But Roy is a very ambitious guy. He's in his starting his third term as the DA
Ventura County and he's only forty two years old. He got first got elected in his early thirties, so and he is a very much a hard line guy as far as crime and punishment, so he would really like he's very he feels very strongly about these people having taken Oga and what has happened to her, so he really wants to help and he decides that when this discussion that Gus Baldonado would be the week link. Gus is not the brightest guy in the world, where Lewis
Moya is a very savvy guy. He started as a dishwasher at this restaurant in Santa Barbara and within about six months worked his way up to night manager. He is very intall he's been to prison before. No way is he going to talk and Missus Duncan has Frank advising her to be to stay silent, so they feel that Gus is the only way that they're going to find out what really happened.
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anywhere anytime. Now. We talked about the week link and all of the information that comes from Gus Baldonado, and you chronicle in your book the assistance of a reverend and a pastor and these people's contribution to extracting or soliciting these confessions from these two killers, first from Baldonado and then reluctantly and then finally from Lewis Moya as well. Let's talk about the details that the police learned through that.
And as a result, you already mentioned Roy Gustafson and his need and desire to prosecute these two these three killers to the utmost of the law. Tell us what he finds out as well, because he is part of this investigation. He wanted to be part of this investigation to help solve this case. What did they find out from these two killers.
Well, first of all, I think i'll mention that there was no miranda warning in nineteen fifty eight, right, so these men were not They could not afford an attorney and so none was appointed to them while they were being questioned. At that point people got three attorneys, but it wasn't until they were actually charged in court for the crime, so they had nobody giving them advice on what they should do. Moya was interrogated by two men.
One was the investigator, Roy Gustusen's DA investigator and another by a deputy sheriff who it turns out had known best Baldonado when he was a boy in Camerio. Gus had been in minor trouble his entire life, and he had a very dysfunctional home and so he tried to use that connection that he had in the investigation. And so eventually it took a while. The deputy to deputy Deputy Higgins convinced Baldonado that he needed to talk now because if he waited till Moya and Missus Duncan talked,
then they would probably blame everything on him. So he did confess to what had happened, and he agreed that he would lead the detectives to where Ogus's body was buried, and he told them that they did this because Missus Duncan paid them to do this. So then once the body was discovered, you know, that was huge news in
the community. And they went up to see Moya, who is still in jail on parole violation charges in Santa Barbara, and they went up to get him because they had arranged for the parole officer that was okay to hold him in Ventura as much as Santa Barbara. And when they were bringing him back, he'd said that he was trying. He had tried to get his mother to get him an attorney, but she hadn't hadn't been able to get
the money together to do that yet. But he wanted to speak to a reverend when he got to Ventura. This was discussion was taking place on the drive down to Ventura, and he said, that's free, right, I could speak to a reverend, somebody who has a real church, and you know, I think that. The detective said, then you mean a priest, and he said, no, no, I want to speak to reverend who has a church of
his own. So when they got to Ventura, they tried to oh, Reverend Gilbert, who is the reverend that used to come and help out with prisoners, helped counsel prison prisoners at the jail. It was just before Christmas and all this body was born was discovered on December twenty first, and rosistant plan to have grand jury indict them if
possible on December twenty sixth. So Reverend Gilbert was just too busy with all of the things going on at church for Christmas time, and he said he couldn't come over until the night of Christmas, December twenty fifth, and when he did come over, and I know this because Reverend Gilbert later testified it at Moya's triable about what happened in that room. He told Moya. Moya wanted to
save his soul. He really was worried that he was going to go to hell because he knew he had committed this terrible murder right, and he told the reverend that he wanted him to pray with him and asked him if he could have a Bible. And Reverend Gilbert said, you know, as long as you're going to lie about this to men, you cannot Your soul cannot be saved. And he said if if you unless you confess to men, it's not good enough just to confess to God that
you have committed his crime. So Moya accepted that, and the reverend left and he told I guess it was Roy Higgins. On the way out, the deputy Ray Higgins that he thought he was ready to talk to you soon, and Ragis waited around the jail, and eventually, somewhere around midnight, Moya said that he was he'd like to talk to Deputy Higgins. And that's when Moya confessed, and he pretty
much told the same story as as Gus Baldonatto. So Roy Guphison, the DA ventured, DA got wored that night and he started redoing his questions for the district attorney and for the grand jury. And the next morning is when they held the grand jury, and there was Moya testified, Baldonado testified, Missus Barnett, the land lady. All of these witness testified to what had happened in the grand jury
and died. Missus Duncan didn't testify, hurt, and Roy Guphison decided not to worry about that, not the caller, and Frank Duncan even testified, and of course trying to say his mother was innocent. But the grand jury indicted all three of the best suspected killers for all of us murder. Something interesting I think happened. As a reader, you know, I'm a true crime I'm interested in those kinds of things, and so I always read about current crimes in the
newspapers and I just don't think this ever happens. But what happened is the day after the grand jury Roy Guftuson it was his prerogative to do this, released all of the transcripts from the grand jury to the press.
Wow.
So, as Lord Sullivan, Missus Duncan's attorney said, you know, it was like all of the potential jurors in the county reading a serialized account what went on in the grand jury. So people all over the county were reading what Moya had said, and what Aldanatto had said, and what Missus short had said. So and that's why Lord Sullivan that the attorney for Missus Duncan tried to get a change of venue for the trial, but the judge did not grant that.
We haven't mentioned that your father all along the way has been reporting on this, but also that he had some insider information within the police, person by Charlie de Tech. We already mentioned Charlie Thompson. What are some of the kinds of things that your father was privy to and had information which helped inform some of his articles as well.
Well. He did have. It was you know, it was a much smaller towns and the police, and there wasn't quite the boundary that goes up I think today between the police investigation and newspaper reporters. So I can't tell you exactly everything that he knew, but he was talking
to witnesses about Missus Duncan, about her history. He was talking to Charlie Thompson, and Charlie was didn't of course release all of the details about his interview with Missus Short and then some of the interviews, but he was giving him things that he thought was important to the investigation of the crime and how maybe the public would be able to if they had seen something or heard something that that would be important, and then they would go to the police. So those are the kinds of
things that Charlie released. And I don't believe that Roy Gustuson, although my dad felt like he was later years almost a friend of Roy's. I mean, he was a very meticulous da and he wouldn't have done or said anything that he thought might have a negative effect on his ability to prosecute these killers.
Now let's talk about this incredible trial, but also along the way you have been following this case, reading what your father has written, to seeing all of the reports. This has been covered by, as you say, in the trial a thirty journalist. There's TV, radio, newswire services. There is a newspaper, so this is a big deal and these are sensational headlines that accompany these stories. And Missus Duncan is a highly awaited person at this trial, isn't she?
With her son? Even though he's a witness, He is allowed to be in at the trial through the entire duration despite being a witness, and that would again is non typical to be allowed.
He sits right behind the defense table and what Sullivan has asked for him to be allowed in court because he says that he's a vital piece of her defense and so it's up to the DA whether he would allow that. And Roy Guphison says, well, okay, if Frank's going to be in the courtroom, then any of my witnesses can also be in court when others are testifying. And so that was agreed to, and Frank was there the entire time.
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Now back to the trial, Missus Duncan. Is there this again? Vivid picture of what's going on at this trial with all these characters present, Frank comforting his mother, but his mother exhibits. Her demeanor at this trial is very very interesting. Tell us some of the things that she does when witnesses testify against her right.
She's very volatile to say the least, and she sometimes just disrupts court and will call out that they're lying, that they're liars. She's called the da a son of a bitch a couple of times, and at one point, when she feels he's too close to her while he's asking the questions since she's in the witness box, she actually raises her hands as if she's going to hit him.
But that's those things. Also, she can also be very charming and so when she gets and that's why Guphisen is trying to provoke her when he's asking her questions, because he's afraid that from the beginning of the trial, where she has been charming when Sullivan first asked was asking her questions, that they might think that she's just this sweet mother who maybe was too attached to her son, and she's always worried it only takes one to hang
a jury, and so he's very concerned about that. And you know, I realized also, if you want me to discuss it now, is we started to talk about my reading of the newspapers and my really obsession with this case because it is a true crime memoir and I have kind of in the chapters that have to do with my family. My father wrote this somewhat whimsical column about our family that was appearing in the same newspaper as the stories of the crime that he was covering.
And so so I go back and forth about my concern about Olga, my worry about her and what has happened, and my you know, it's kind of a hard nosed little girl, maybe a little like Roy Gufsison, and I think children sometimes are. That's very black and white about right and wrong, and as I can tell you as a school principle that yeah, children don't see the gray areas. They feel that if somebody is done wrong, they should
be punished for it. And my dad also there is humor in this book because his columns were humorous and he was just kind of a very funny guy. And I know that that sounds odd to pair that with a true crime story, but this is the life that I lived, and it seems very normal for me to have kind of a dark humor life going on at the same time that there was a true crime pace
going on. And I sometimes when people used to ask me about the book I used, and they say, well, what's about And I said, well, it's kind of like Dave Barry meets and Rule in Fargo, because it's Dave Barie wrote. Some of your listeners aren't familiar with him. He wrote a very humorous column that was frequently about his family and Rule everybody knows wrote True Crime and Fargo. That movie it was these Bumbling Killers, and there were
parts that were almost humorous. So I think that that somewhat describes the book because there is a lot about what was going on life in the nineteen fifties. It was a much more innocent time and it was really just sort of on the cusp of when everything started to change in society. It's just before the beginning of the nineteen sixties, you know, when President Kennedy was elected and then assassinated, and you know, things changed during that time.
And I do believe that part of what I was so taken with this crime, and it was such a pivotal moment for me to discover that she'd been kidnapped and then murdered, was that things like this didn't happen in small time America. Maybe it happened down in Los Angeles, are up in San Francisco, I didn't know, but not in my very unsophisticated little community. So there is kind of a contrast between what goes on in everyday life in the nineteen fifties and then what has happened to Olga Duncan.
Back to this trial, and this is a death penalty case, again, something that California has grappled with in many states, and federally, society has grappled over the death penalty itself. In this particular case, you talk about Roy Gustafson, their attorneys Baldonado and Moya, approached him about the possibility of having a
life sentence and what was his reaction. And let's get back to the trial and the details that Frank Duncan, the person that didn't believe his mother could hurt a chicken, apparently the details that he gets to unfortunately hear about how his wife was killed.
Okay, well, yes, Moya and Baldonado, who both had very good attorneys appointed for them, tried to get Roy Gushison to agree to take the death penalty off the table. But the death penalty in nineteen fifty eight was that you were eligible for parole after seven years, and Roy Guftison, even though that would have been unlikely, was not about to do that. He did agree to separate their trials
from Missus Duncan if they would testify against her. And so that's why Moya and Baldonado testified against Missus Duncan with no assurance that they wouldn't receive the death penalty, and Frank heard he listened to. It was when Moya was testifying the excruciating details of how they had taken all out of her apartment beat her and strangled her
in the car as they drove away. The car was having car trouble, so instead of going all the way to Mexico, which was the original plan, they drove off on a road and headed towards Ohi and there about six miles across the county line into Ventura. They killed Olga and buried her in a shallow grave. And it was very detailed what Moya said about the killing, the beating her with the gun, the breaking the gun, strangling her, finally hitting her with a rock, and Frank just couldn't
listen to it. He finally jumped out pat part way through and ran from the court the courtroom, and his mother was calling after her after him at the time. And there's a picture in the book, an associated press picture, that shows Frank leaning down with his hand on his head. He looks very upset, and Missus Duncan is sitting there looking at her son with her her arms crossed and
just kind of giving him a disgusted look. And it turns out because I have the associated press picture, so they give the caption that this picture was taken when Moya was discussing the details of his wife's murder.
Incredible, It doesn't take long for this jury, despite the vigorous defense by war Lord Sullivan and his team, what is the verdict?
Well, and I will say Ward Sullivan insisted that this was still the extortion that these men were trying to get money out of Missus Duncan to pay back Missus Escobal. So the jury takes I believe it was three hours, three and a half hours into a guilty verdict.
And a death penalty, and then the trials of Baldonado happened shortly after and OI as well, there's the same results death penalty right, Well.
They had already pleaded guilty because obviously were testified, so it was just over the penalty phase. And they also received the death penalty. And I thought that the judge in the in the book, he was also in his eighties. Judge Blackstock said before he passed their death penalty, is anybody who thinks that I haven't thought about this penalty day and night and every hour all in between is wrong and that if you're going to be a judge,
you have to be a judge. And he pronounced the death at least for those.
Two also absolutely and as per typically there was an appeals process in California. They went through that entire process and all those sentences and convictions were affirmed was.
Right they were. And at the time it was Governor Edmund Brown was the governor and he had run on a campaign. He mentioned it. It wasn't like a big thing in his campaign, but he wanted to do away with the death penalty when he was in office, and he turned the ultimately appealed to him to commute the sentence at the end, and he wouldn't do it. Even for him. Somebody who was opposed to the death penalty couldn't step in for these three because it was just such a heinous crime.
You speak about these any kind of sympathy for these two criminals. In July of nineteen sixty, what are these two guys involved with?
They try to make They try to escape from San Quentin. From San Quentin for a very big prison in California where death row is and I don't know exactly what they were thinking, but they they really didn't have a prayer, but they when a guard was down in the cell block, one of them attacked and they were with other inmates and they eventually got him out of there too with tear gas and died the jail.
Break when finally all the appeals were exhausted and their execution date was finally set. There are certain people that attend this execution. Your father, Bob Holt, was he one of those people that attended.
Yes, all the executions happened on the same day, August eighth, I believe it was nineteen sixty two. Moya and Baldonado were Actually they had two chairs in the gas chamber. We believe that, so that both of them were executed at the same time in Missus Duncan later that afternoon, and my father was there to witness all three of the executions.
Was there any statements, any interesting statements from any of the defendants.
Well, when and Moy and Baldonado were led into the gas chamber, Moya Moya was very subdued, but Baldonatto was just being very jovial and kind of joking around and waving at people that we could see on the other side of the glass that were there to witness the executions. And Missus Duncan when she was brought in, just before she went into the chamber, she asked the warden where's
my son? Where's Frankie? And he wasn't there. He was down at the appeals court in San Francisco making one last try to get the execution stopped.
Now, this book, you say, is a tribute to your father. Tell us a little bit about the effort to put this book together and that tribute to your father.
The effort to put this book together, it took me nine years, obviously not constantly writing, but you know, I tried to write it in a number of different ways. At first, I thought I was going to fictionalize the story, but that just didn't work. It was stranger in fiction, right, So that all of these transcripts, there's five thousand pages of trial transcripts, also had an unpublished account written by Roy Gushison that I was able to look at to
give me insight into the trial. So a lot of what you see as far as dialogue in the scenes,
I got from the transcript. So these people actually said these things both in the trial, and then I got some of the stuff from the I decided not to have to write about the grand jury, just the results, but there was a lot of testimony in the grand jury that I could use, so that what the people involved said was authentic, that these were words that they'd actually set in court or that they had given in a newspaper story, and a lot of them were interviewed for newspaper stories.
And so you write near the end or at the end, you say that this book was something an idea that your father had, but you just never got around to it.
Right.
He was always going to be said he was going to write an account of the Duncan cases. That's what he referred to it as the Remarkable Duncan Case. But you know, I thought of writing it in just a straight true crime at the beginning, but it's very complicated and it's kind of it's not easy to do that way because we sort of knew who the killer was
right from the get go. But he died suddenly. He retired at sixty five, and that's when he was going to write this, But he passed away suddenly when he was sixty nine, so there were only four years, and he did have a lot of files, but he hadn't written any chapters or anything like that.
Well, I want to congratulate you on this book because I'm certainly certain that he would be very, very proud and very very happy with what has happened with this book, A Lovely Girl, The Tragedy of Oga Duncan and the Trial of one of California's most notorious killers. I want to thank you very much Deborah Larkin for coming on and talking about this book. Is there any social media do? Do you have a website? Tell us about that if you can't.
Yes, I have a website Deborahholelarkin dot com. I have an author page on Facebook Deborah Hult Larkin Author and I also well, I don't. My Goodreads author page isn't really up and gone going yet but.
Soon another source. Yes, thank you so much again, thank you so much. A Lovely Girl, The Tragedy of Olga Duncan and the Trial of one of California's most notorious killers. Thank you so much for this interview, for great evening.
Thanks for having me Dan.
Thank you