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Since eighteen plus, you are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written.
About them Gaesy, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker DTK. 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.
David Kolcheck's eighth book, Deadly California, is another tome of off the wall murders, accidents, and robberies gone wrong that have happened in California, with true crime tales from nineteen twelve to nineteen sixty four, occurring in the San Francisco, Los Angeles, Northern and Southern California, and Sacramento. Stories such as When Sally Shot Harry, double murder on O Street,
Callern Sargent Liquor Store, and Corpus Delecti. The book that we're featuring this evening is Deadly California Murders, Accidents and Robbery's Gone Wrong with my special guests, Crime is Storian and author David Coolcheck. Welcome to the program, and thank you very much for this interview. David Coolcheck, Well, thanks for having me again. Let's start off that the last interview we had was from your last book, Forgotten California
Murders nineteen fifteen to nineteen sixty eight. Tell us of your past books involving California, and tell us a little bit about your background living in California.
Yeah.
When I moved to California two thousand and two, my wife's from Sacramento moved home for family reasons. I immediately got into the history of California. I was a history major at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and left my studies to come to California. And I realized that all these books, especially about the more frontier days, were
all written about the same people. And I thought, well, there's got to be more to this, and so I started researching criminals that you haven't read about before, murderers especially, and that's how I came up with my first book, California Justice, shootout Slynchings and Assassinations. I inquired Quill Driver books and they said, yeah, sure, sounds good and just happen that way. So here we are eight books later, and it's been.
Good Now let's get to this collection you have had. This is murders, accidents, and robbery's gone wrong. You searched again, and in introduction we talked about these stories emanate from Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, Sacramento, your hometown in California, and also northern and southern California stories. So tell us just a little bit about the process of gathering these stories and sort of the criteria you had for putting this collection together.
Yeah, the stories are just ones that I come across, because you know, once you read like an Oakland Tribune from nineteen twenty, they'll tell you about everything that's happening all over the state. You know, the Sacramento Bee was another great paper of record, the Fresno b So if it wasn't in those papers, it woul at least have a little bet. So if you read those papers, you could find out about a lot of crimes and things that happen in more out there parts of the state.
Now, let's talk about when Sally shot Harry. This is May eleventh, nineteen sixty one. This is in Redwood City, San Mateo County, and a Harry Oliff. You say, is an odd guy, average intelligence, good physique, wanted to be police officer and married a woman named Sally le Bla in nineteen fifty four. Tell us about Sally and Harry's life and what happens one day in May nineteen sixty one.
Well, Sally worked as a secretary at an insurance company and Harry just took on menial jobs and took classes at community colleges. He was insecure guys about his situation. He used to just haul off and hit Sally like they were driving once on al Camino Reil, and with that warning of provocutation, he'd just started beating her with one hand while steering the car. So and he's just
backhander across the face. He told him how to get someplace for directions, and he smacked her for not being lost.
So Harry joined the Air Force is in was stationed in Paris, and Sally came to visit him, and he wanted to do the badger scheme, which is scheme where women would pick up a guy at a bar able to pick out a target, you know, somebody who's there in a convention or something, or some big wig, and then guy cleaning her husband or her husband comes in on them and they blackmail them and get money out of them. He wanted to do that with his wife while she was visiting him in Paris. I was in
the Air Force. It's kind of an odd duck. So when he got out of the Air Force, he got friendly with the San Materio Sheriff's Department in Redwood City Police Department, and he went under cover as an agent for the San Matero County Sheriff's Department, and he posed as a beat nick marijuana user to entrap other Peninsula marijuana users and sellers, and the police department paide for a little house he had where you know, it was like the pot smoking party house and stuff right, and
Harry grew like a go tee and Kangero's hair out a bit and spoken beat nick lingo, and he had orange fur covered shoes that he used to wear around, so he was noticeable. And so yeah, he went and knarked on all the people that he had made friends with and had smoked marijuana with. In April nineteen fifty nine,
he snitched on two guys. One guy was just a janitor and another one was a twenty three year old laborer, and they found like five ounces of weed and three marijuana cigarettes in the guy's shirt pocket, and overall he was responsible for fifteen arrests. So whether that's good or bad, I don't know. But he was just basically getting casual
marijuana users off the street. So you know, he thought that that would be a lead into the police department and did some low lectures and stuff for lunchtime rotary clubs and stuff about his experience being a narc guy. But he kept on trying. He tried twice for the police examination and failed both times, and that's pretty much ended his chances of being a cop. Ended up being a swimming instructor in San Carlos, and the marriage fell
apart and he separated. So on oh oh, if he like crashed his car in another car, like put the driver of the other car in the hospital, and you know, they didn't check the seer he was intoxicated or anything, but he was getting drunk a lot at that time. Sally rented a three bedroom or a three room apartment over a Garadge and Rea her house at twenty one Birch Street in Midwood City, and the house is still there, and so was the apartment there. Harry dropped in whenever
he wanted, and Sally couldn't get rid of him. She did his laundry and fed him while he hit the local taverns and dated younger women. On May tenth, he called Sally about ten thirty at night and he wanted to chat. About hour later, after Sally had gone to bed, he called again, and he was drunken in a noisy bar room. He asked her to join her at a tavern. She said she wouldn't, and he frettened her, saying you
better come, or I'll come over and get you. So she was terrified she was going to get beat up again since she picked up his thirty eight caliber revolver that he had left at her place and sat in her darkened apartment waiting for Harry to show up. And Harry shows up right about midnight, let himself in. He had his own key, and he walked towards her menacingly, and she shot him when he was about two feet away, shot him right in the middle chest. One hit his
left arm. The other one got him right now and turned around and staggered sixty feet down this falcony, the stairways and into the driveway. Where he fell down dead. So Sally called her close friend, the cop that helped Harry get into his informant work, and he came over first before the police or anybody showed up. She was booked in jail open charge of murder, and her attorney said that he had never gotten so many requests to testify for a defendant, because people who knew the couple
voluntarily requested to testify in her defense. Even Harry's parents visited Sally in jail. Yeah, no one liked Harry. He's you know, he slapped his wife right right in the bar, right in front of people and stuff, and yeah, he was a very nice guy. Harry had this girlfriend named Amy Burke, who was the seminarial Times described as a
blonde and a real doll, and she's nineteen. She stabbed till the detectives that oh, I promised that they'd get to Mexican divorce and they'd get married, and they shared an apartment.
In San Francisco.
So the trial begins on July fifth, and it's hot, like one hundred degrees and it's in the old courthouse, no air conditioning and stuff, and they just paraded a list of people who all testified to seeing Harry, you know, slap Sally around in front of people, and she talked about how he'd force her to take off her bra before they entered a bar, and then she was just like he had her flirt with guys and he would be a couple of seats away in the bar and stuff.
He guy just kicks out of that if Harry gust some reason. But yeah, she was terrified that he was going to beat her up. And they had the trial and she was found that guilt after a nine day trial and one hundred degree heat.
You write about how big this trial was and how sensational it was in terms of the salacious testimony of Sally, where she talked about, as you say, forcing her to take her bar raw off before she went into the bar and to flirt with men, and all these conversations about There was pornography found, there was naked photos found. So there was a vigorous cross examination of Sally that
she endured quite successfully. And then you write about the dramatic verdict not guilty and she collapses in the arms of her attorneys.
Yeah, and her parents who had moved away right after her she graduated from school, they moved to the East Coast and they were there and they led her out of the courthouse. Attorney had a press conference at his house with them and they asked her. The press asked her some questions before she was going to go leave it to her parents' house in Massachusetts. But she just answered a few questions as.
It incredible tale. Let's talk about another extraordinary tale. Keller and Sergeant Liquor Store. This is December twenty third, nineteen fifty three in Long Beach, California, and very interesting character. Lynn Feaster, tough man who despised criminals and he worked at a clerk as a clerk at Keller and Sergeant liquor store. And he was a World War One veteran. Tell us about Lynn Feaster and some of the things that he does to counter anybody trying to rob the liquor store.
Yeah.
He was born in Missouri and moved to Long Beach in nineteen thirty eight and he was bill forty two.
He had gotten divorced.
He his sister lived in a Long Beach and had a son like in Phoenix or something. But he had no problem to justinal life in California. He got a job at Keller and Sergeant liquor store and Long Beach, and he lived in an apartment just a couple of doors down from the store. He's a nighttime clerk and it was pretty dangerous jobs. It's like, why I put these robberies gone wrong in this book, because it's just fascinating the liquor store robberies that happened in the nineteen fifties,
late forties, early sixties, but just amazing. I don't know why anybody would do that for a living. I read about one story in San Francisco and the place now is like a very nice for coffee shop. So Lynn Feaster, he's a nighttime clerk, and he kept a bunch of guns on him. He hit him under the counter, and he practiced shooting. He did rehearse scenarios of how you'd act when he'd getting it held up if he could
grab the gun. So there's no record how many robberies Feaster had hindered over the last six years he worked at Keller and Sergeant that he had officially killed two would be bandits, wounded a third, and brought about the arrest of five other people. So that's just crazy if you think about it. You know what a job. You know, I was a process process server for like four years, and it was this guy had a much, you know, scarier job.
Absolutely.
But on March twenty fourth, nineteen forty eight, this twenty one year old David Krueger and nineteen year old Donald Moore walked into the liquor store told FISA it was a stick up. So Feaster pretended he was fainting. He grabbed a pistol from under the counter and shot Krueger in the chests.
And the guy sur vibe.
They were so young that they were sentenced to the California Youth Authority and they did some time for that. In August twelfth, nineteen forty eight, these two guys robbed Feaster of one hundred and forty bucks, and Feaster ran out and fired a shot from his pistol, and guy went by and said, hey, the cops just jroe bis a Feast fired another shot in their cops came back. He hopped into the police card and they found one of the robbers, Walter Gillen, and they arrested him at headquarters.
He told the police he had never been a rescued before. He was like terrified. So the first time he attempted a robbery, he sang like a canary, and the police broke up a robbery ring that was all over Los Angeles area, and five guys, they were all under twenty six years old, were all arrested for the crimes for all those robberies. So in March seventh, nineteen forty nine, James Phillips and Gail Hare went out of robbery spree. And Hair was an auto mechanic and fender guy. Phillips
was a car salesman. They were both out of work and broke. They went and hit this one liquor store at about ten thirty and got seventy five dollars from them. About half hour later, they showed up over at Keller and Sergeant liquor store tending to rob it, and they formed a fifty four year old Feaster that they're robbing the place. Fisa had a different idea. He pulled out his thirty eight caliber pistol and plugged Phillips in the heart, killing him instantly. Easter put down Hair with a bullet
to the throat and he died later in the hospital. So, you know, I kind of enjoyed the notorarity he had, and he told the Long Beach Independent that he had been practicing for six months what to do in case he was a victim of fugs. I figured the hold up men would take all there is in the cash register and then beat or kill you if they figured you had hidden other money around the store. I'm just a workingman who needs his job. I wish they would
let me alone. So not long after that, a postcard arrived at the liquor store for Feaster and said you will be taken care of for what you have done. And it was signed to Gail pal So the police kicked it out. They couldn't figure it out. They couldn't trace it or anything like that. So that was one thing. So on December twenty third, nineteen fifty three, Billy Morris and John Davis sent to the liquor store about eleven
thirty and they tried to cash a forged check. Feaster wouldn't catch it, and mor Scott Angry pulled his pistol, so Feaster was caught off guard. He pleaded for his life on his knees. He's probably gonna He was trying to grab a pistol that he had underneath the counter. You know, he was doing his overroutine and a Morsekuy shot him in the mouth with a three eighty bullet ended up bouncing aroundside his skull, and fifteen minutes later, Feusture's body was discovered by a sailor keem in to
buy cigarettes. You know, that's amazing too about these liquor stores were open until two in the morning, and kids would come in at you know, eleven o'clock at midnight and stuff. Wow, yeah, things are open a lot.
You know.
I think it was too because air conditioning wasn't around a lot and more people did things than the evenings. Just like in Sacramento. I read about this guy who was shot at an ice cream parlor at twelve thirty and on like a Tuesday, you know, and it's like, you know, he was an attorney, he was like forty years old. It's like, I don't know, man, people stayed out more, I guess. But yeah, they found Feuster's body.
There was a thirty eight line by his head, and then he had a semi automatic pistol in his pants pocket. He didn't have a chance to grab any of them. So it was a couple of years before, the Long Beach detectives linked on Skis to the murder, and they arrested Davis at Salt Lake City and Morris and Compton, who still lived in the same place.
And at the.
Trial, John Davis's sixteen year old son took the stand as a witness against his father, and he said the knight of the murder who waited in his father's automobiles. Davis and Morse went in a liquor store and a few minutes came out of the store and he told his father drove Morris To's Compton home, and then they went to their trader in Guardania their trailer. He overheard his father tell a woman who lived there that Morse
had killed the clerk. The next day they hooked up the trailer and moved to Redwood City, of all places, New San Francisco. So the jury found them guilty and sent them to die. Yes, and they appealed it. They gave him another trial, and in it his son said that the court the da made him say those things, And he said, you told me to answer the questions, tell the truth. You and the other officers told me not to ask for death penalty if you knew you were, I would have never testified.
And had told the judge that he couldn't think straight.
And he was asked directly if he was with his father Knight and murder, and then if you overheard David Study shot, is that David Study more shot Feaster and youth applied no to both questions, and the judge dismissed the case.
Two guys are left free.
Very interesting legacy of all the incredible lives that were changed and all the people that were killed, just at this little liquor store, like you say, openly and see when.
I checked, I think that's one of the liquor stours that's still there, so and it's I think it's still a liquor store.
And no couple of them in the book.
Are you talk about an incredible occupation as well, even though he was a World War One that he was read for these criminals, and you say he didn't couldn't stand these criminals, and so again he almost gloated when he was able to kill a couple of these would be robbers at his liquor store. And then the fate that he injured himself where he was on his knees begging for his life. You're right that he's trying to
go for his pistol. Likely, but he was not able to do that and was shot in the mouth and killed in that liquor store and left to die in a pool of blood.
Yeah, he was.
He was barely acting, you know, getting down his knees like go, don't do it, and he was ready to grab that gun and blast the guy.
Yeah, very very interesting and interesting the behavior of the son that again was forced to testify against his father, the crowd and the district attorney assuring him that they wouldn't ask for the death penalty, and then in that first trial, certainly they did, and his father received the death penalty in the retrial as a result of the appeal. Then the sun turned the tables on the district attorney that had lie to him.
Incredible.
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Great news Ritual is offering my listeners ten percent off during your first three months. Visit ritual dot com slash murder to start Ritual or add Essential for Women eighteen plus to your subscription today now, David, we are continuing with one of the extraordinary stories, this one called Corpus Delecti and January twenty eighth, nineteen twenty six in Sacramento, and this features a person named George Waters and his wife Myrtle and they're getting ready for work. She works
as a kitchen maid and he is a porter. What happens that morning, Well, this is.
A pretty bad morning. They were kind of arguing. She was angry at him for something, and George was up porter for the Southern Pacific Railroad, you know, which was great job for especially an African American in nineteen twenty six. And he picked up a twenty two rifle and shot her in the bedroom from the twelve year old daughter, Genevieve. And they have like other four kids, three other kids, so we're two other kids.
So you know. It happened all in.
The morning, and was getting ready for school and work and stuff. Her mother like bled out on the bed and Waters. Her father ordered Genevieve to get a wash rag and a basin water, and he cleaned off the blood and carried the body to a spare room that he sat down and had breakfast with his children, Genevieve,
eight year old George, and four year old Dadan. After breakfast, Waters grabbed a couple of sacks and some canvas from the backyard and went to the spare room, and Genevieve could hear him chopping and sawing his mother's her mother's body to Piethos. Waters told Genevieve that he would cut her throat if she told anyone or if she said anything when if the police questioned. Waters called up his
wife's place of employment. It was a sanitarium and spoke to her supervisor, who was concerned that she and showed for work. He said she was sick and probably would not come back to work. He showed up at the sanitarium a couple of days later, collected her clothes and personal effects that she had at work. He also picked up her wages, and he said that they were all
moving to San Diego. So the family left Sacramento on February second, nineteen twenty six, to live with Water's mother in San Diego, and by May, Genevieve told her nineteen year old sister, who had lived there, about the murder, and Dorothy called the police. San Diego police ended up calling Sacramento because water story didn't add up, and they sent the cops down there to pick them up and
bring him to Sacramento. They found the rifle and several knives that traced the human blood on him, so Waters pleaded not guilty. He said that the wife left. The family moved to San Diego, and they were all confident that, you know, he was lying. They called like people that were neighbors and things that came by and thought things were fishy and stuff where she worked and things like that. Genevieve went up on the stand and told what she saw.
She said that they were getting dressed and the other children are asleep. She said, Mama was dressed and she was just lacing his shoes when Papa sat up on the bed, reached for his rifle, inserted a shell, and shot her in the chest. Jenfy told that her father carried her mother's body to the front room for several hours. She heard him chopping and saw on around six in the evening from the kitchen windows, she saw him carrying
two heavy sacks outside. So she was questioned by the fleet six different times, and his attorney took advantage of you know, inconsistencies and contradictions. And she was a ten year old kid up there, you know, talking about her others death in front of a bunch of people in court.
You know, of course she was. She was just a kid.
So he got sentence to death, and they went through other peels of system and stuff. And he had people say that they bumped into his wife on a street car in San Francisco or Los Angeles. They were all
their claims were all dismissed. But his water sentence was commuted to life with no parole, and Governor Young he wrote, never in the history of California's death penalty and imposed for a human being without the production of a body of the victim, and that only twice before in this state has a verdict of guilty been rendered in such a case. And in both instances, the defendants were sentenced to life imprisonment.
So he lucked out absolutely no body.
Usually no conviction, but in this particular case there was a conviction.
Yeah, And being that he worked on the railroad, and you know with all the viaducts and bridges and things, you know, it's it's an old Midwest mafia trick to drop bodies onto passing trains off bridges, like there's a train under off the bridge and you just dump them into like a you know, the gondola or something. Then it's Portland's problem, Santa Fe's problem. After that, you won't get noticed for thousands of miles.
Incredible, let's talk about another extraordinary tale double murder on O Street, and this is involving November twenty second, nineteen twenty two, in Sacramento. Martin Sliskovic, a twenty year old Slovenian immigrant, you say, who was a bully who liked the flash his gun, and he ran the Young American Cafe and he roomed with his cousin, Marco Radman at
a house on O Street. Tell us the living arrangements on the house on O Street and a little bit more about Martin Sliskovic and what happens November twenty second, nineteen twenty two.
Well, Marco and his wife Jenny, she's twenty five. They had three kids, and another cousin, thirty year old John Seleskovitch, lived there too. So Martin, there's something wrong with that guy, you know, he didn't know about boundaries or something. He wanted to have sex with his cousin's wife, Jenny, and she wouldn't have nothing to do with him, and she went and kicked him out of the house. He didn't stop pursuing infections and so he got mad at the rejection.
So about five pm on November twenty second, nineteen twenty two, Martin entered the house and walked into the dining room, where John Lokovich and Jenny sat at the table along with their nine year old daughter.
Agnes.
Marco was at work at the restaurant event, so approaching the cousins, he pulled out a small caliber semiautomnic pistol and fired two shots at Jenny and she sank to the floor, where John picked up stood up to grab the gun, but Martin.
Shot his cousin three times.
He turned to Jenny's prostate body and fired one more bullet into her. According to Agnes, he stood in the doorway of their home for ten minutes, but that was probably the exaggeration by a little girl. He was picked up by a cab driven by his friend. He only wrote a few blocks in the cab and he jumped out and he hid the Yolo County side of the Sacramento River. He crossed the Sacramento River. You're in a
different county. You're in Yolo County in the city of West Sacramento, and then Davis is about ten miles from there too. So he was hiding in the jungle of the river near the Ice Street bridge until he could hop a freight train going to Oakland. So the police came and they were just idiots. They completely contaminated the
crime scene. They allowed newspaper reporters into the house and while the police scratching their heads over the body of John Slukovich laying in the hallway, the reporters discovered the body of Jenny laying.
In the kitchen.
Like the cops didn't even going to the other room or to clear the house or anything. And an old nine year old kid, Agnes, was weeping over her mother's dead body. So the police where He said that Redmond Home was the place where you can get a drink of Jackass brandy and relaxes to your fellow Slavs. And you know that was not uncommon. You're in phoibition with all ethnic groups. Police put pressure on Sacramento Slavic community. They raided the boarding houses owned by Slavs and interrogated
suspected acquaintances of the killer. They wasted valuable resources tracking down the cab driver, knew nothing about his friend was doing. So you know, they had a big double funeral at Saint Stephen's Catholic Church and they were buried next to each other. In the cemetery. So later on May eleventh, in nineteen twenty three, Slovich was discovered working in a restaurant San Diego, and he confessed to his crime the San Diego detectives.
They came up.
Sacramento cops came and picked them up and brought them back, and Soluovic said, it's better to be dead than put in prison for the rest of my life and made to eat mush and beans and break rock. So Slogovich got his wish when he was sentenced to the gallows and Fulsome prison, and his last words were goodbye boys, and took him fifteen minutes to die, so they hung him in Fulsome prison.
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You know that's the whole area over there from that last story and this one has all been torn down and redeveloped like for the last sixty years. You know, there are no old buildings in that whole neighborhood. And it's blocks maybe ten blocks on O Street, which is on side of the Capitol. But guys were staking out in the rain this bakery at the Sutter Bakery that was at seventeen twenty L Street, and these guys came
in and woman who has partners with this guy. Her name is Minnehawkley, and Max Karl was the owner and the baker. She shouted out to him and again this is like in the evening too. He shouted out to her. You know, there was a robber and Krawl was like, well, I'll get my gun too, and they grappled and broke away, fire te shots ready to krawl. First bullet entered his back and passed cleaned through his body, and the second child in his heart. Killers ran off into the rainy night.
Here again it's a bakery and it's open at night. You know, it's just it's amazing that people were out and the belt so late in the old days. So you know, people saw it, saw these guys loitering and stuff, and all they could see is that there were two guys in their late twenties. So the cop set up roadblocks and they went into all the pool halls and cafes and dance halls and shook down all the usual suspects. That's kind of how they did things in Sacramento back then.
This guy named Charles McGuire popped into a Southern Pacific freight car and there's a sky named Meaner Barry. It was a medical student from New York City and he was bumming around the country being a hobo, like a lot of young people did during those times, like on their summer vacation, just to get experienced, have fun, maybe work a little bit. They started chatting and McGuire started dragging that he had pulled hold up in Sacramento and had shot up shot this guy when he put up
a fight. So Barry got off a train in Collfax, which is about forty miles east of Sacramento, like right on the Donner Pass, towards Donner Pass. So Barry got off and told the trained dispatcher about McGuire, and they sent the message to the next stop and pulled him over and Gold Run, California, which is now it's like it's just a rest stop on the way and eighty.
So you know, they brought him back to Sacramento and stuff, and the guy denied that he was involved, but after a couple hours of interrogation room they probably smacked him across the head with a phone book and a rubber hose and stuff, and he finally admitted that he fired the gun, but had no intentions on doing it. So he told about his partner, twenty three year old Zero Roski, and McGuire said that he met him ino Pool Hall only hours before the murder, and after a couple of drinks,
they decided to go rab the bakery. They hung out in the rain scouting out the situation for ten minutes, and McGuire admitted pulling the trigger, killing the Austrian immigrant. And he said, instead of complying, he grabbed all of them and so he started calling me names and he fired twice. So McGuire still talking and he said about how you know where they went after the crime and the partner was supposed to meet him at eleven o'clock the next morning, and he just didn't show up, so
he went and hopped a freight train. So yeah, McGuire talked about you know, he was on the train with him and he was scared that he was would get shot by the guy and stuff.
So that Rotowski guy.
A few days before the murder, he was caught riding in a stolen car, but he wasn't the driver, and no one in the car new was stolen, so they charged Rowski with vagrancy and he served a couple of days in jail and was told to leave. So he was captured March twenty first, nineteen thirty seven, in Leadville, Colorado, and he pled that guilty and changes plead guilty sentence
to life in prison. McGuire was executed on December third, nineteen thirty seven, and he was the last prisoner executed in fulsome prison.
I have one other story that I'd like you to tell, at least we can discuss, and it's the very first story in your collection, and it was Papa was awfully mad. This is August third, nineteen forty two in San Francisco, and rod and Gertrude haik and they're going to go out on August second, nineteen forty two with the brother in law, with their brother in law, Warren Ritchie. And in this particular case very much reminded me of the story about Genevieve witnessing the horror of her mother being
killed and then dismembered in the side room. This young girl named Janice is only six years old and gets to witness some horror of her own that August third, nineteen forty two. Can you tell us a little bit about Rodney and Gertrude and what happens that night after they go out and he comes back early and she decides to stay out late.
Yeah, it was during war time in San Francisco and things are just open twenty four hours a day, and you know, there was work to be had everywhere. Other shipyards were all booming, and Rad worked at a bulldozer operator on Treasure Island. Treasure Island is the island in the middle of the Bay Bridge and there was a major seaplane base there. All kinds of things now it's kind of there was a World's Fair there too. Now it's kind of like condos and stuff. So he was
safe from military services. He's married and had a kid, had a job that had to do with you know, military out there. So at eleven o'clock in the evening, the left six year old Janis alone in the apartment in eighty one ninth Street, which is I think the dog Patch area of San Francisco, go pretty close to the stadium, the baseball stadium. They went out to paint the town red and only after an hour Radney came home and he was really drunk, and Gertrude stayed out,
and he was angry that she stayed out. Later and Rodney laid down the couch with one eye open. About four in the morning, Gertrude came home with their brother in law, Warren, and he jumped up immediately and attacked her, and Warren took off. He just got out of there, got in his car and took off. He started beating his twenty seven year old wife senseless, tearing off her clothes and just beat her to a bleeding poulp it's
all right, in front of his six year old daughter. Janice, and the walls of the apartment were splattered in blood, and just so was the clothes Rodney was wearing. The inspector, Cop Frank Arihorn San Francisco PD, accepted Roddy's confession, took him to jail, and they got a statement from Janice, who told the inspector Papa was awfully mad. When Mama came home, he hit her and I heard him say
something about a knife. I ran into the kitchen and hid the big knives there so he wouldn't hurt Mama more. Danis had a plenty of love caused by her getting it away while he was beating his her mother and to death.
They called so.
Rodney's father Auto is this rich farmer from Chaucella and he owned land like all over California, including in Oakland. In nineteen thirty eight, Rodney got arrested by Mondesto police for selling some of his father's grain and keeping the proceeds, and he was angry that his father turned him in. He was basically if I thought he was getting a loan,
none what you know? He was owed flirted out to the police, says his father is responsible for the murder of his uncle fourteen years earlier, legally his uncle taking carnal liberties with Otto's fourteen year old daughter and this guy named Fred Green and Otto were arrested and lodged the same place as Rodney. This is like three years
four years before he murdered his wife. So supposed to be this guy named Karl Rasmussen who was a ranch hand, shot or beat Collins to death in front of a bunk house screen who was eighteen at the time, was working at the ranch and helped Auto and risk meson Barry Collins. So they kind of said it was an honor slaying, and they just the eight dropped the case.
You know, the guy was a rich landowner and just kind of an honor murder and they couldn't find a body, and they couldn't find the Otto guy, and so they just dropped the charges. So, you know, he Rodney confessed to killing his wife and so they senced him to five years of life in San Quentin. He pleaded guilty to second degree murder. He was transferred to Chino, which is a was a medium security prison in nineteen forty four,
and then he was granted special for role. In April eighth nineteen forty four, and he has listed in the US Army. Just like a couple months later, in nineteen fifty the census lists around me Hackey as a prisoner at the Madria County Jail, and he died in nineteen sixty three at age forty seven.
It's very interesting sort of what's written between the lines that he was only sentenced to five years in San Quentin after pleading two second degree murder, but he was also when he was transferred to nineteen forty four. He was also given a special parole in nineteen forty four and enlisted in the US Army. From other stories, it sounds like that's you go to jail or you enlist
in the army. But this five year sentence seems to be a somewhat of a nod in that where men were given sort of an understanding for a murder involving again jealousy and other men.
Yeah, it wasn't seemed as big of a crime as if it would have been two guys in a parking lot of a bar or something. It's like, oh, it was just his wife, so but it didn't sound like he had a very good life afterwards, and the poor daughter. She was just bounced around between her mother's family and his father's family, and I think she ended up in foster care and she kind of fell off the map at about age sixteen. I couldn't find anything else about her.
It's incredible when you realize that this Genevieve again vigorous cross examination is what they call it, and this other Janis is six years old, so even younger, and there was no way that the kind of trauma that has injured at at a court trial can be undone, I think, in any doable way.
Yeah.
Yeah, And it's pretty hard to find any of these people afterwards. You don't, especially with women. They get married and change their names and things, and you know, it turns into a wild use chase trying to figure.
Out who is who.
Absolutely, you know, some people just don't want to be found. Yeah.
It's interesting too, though, that two small children in all of these stories that you just you know, there was not a concerted effort to include two stories with children being witnesses to murder, but it is an unusual aspect of these incredible stories in this collection.
Yeah, thank you.
I want to thank you so much David for coming on and talking about deadly California murders, accidents, and robberies gone wrong. For those people that might want to take a look at your rather work, where would you advise them to go.
Well, I have an author page on Amazon that'd be a good place to start. All my books are available on Amazon and in your local bookstore.
I've seen them.
Thank you very much, David Kolcheck for coming on and talking about murders, accidents, and robberies gone wrong.
Thank you so much for this interview. You have a great evening.
Thanks for having me. Good night,