THE MURDER OF THORA CHAMBERLAIN-Rod Kackley

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he admits abducting the child. He also tells the FBI he killed the girl and threw her body into the Pacific Ocean. A search for her corpse proves fruitless. Then, when all hope is lost, authorities discover the skeleton of another young woman who's fallen victim to this madman. The wife of the man who made that discovery is found

dead at the bottom of the cliff. During the accused killer's trial, women around the country fall in love with the handsome monster and literally break down the doors of a courthouse to get close to him. After the child's killer is convicted and sentenced to the gas chamber, a scientist shows up and says he can bring the murderer back from the dead. The book featuring this evening is The Murder of Thora Chamberlain, a shocking true crime story

with my special guest, journalist and author Rod Cackley. Welcome back to the program and thank you very much for this interview Rod Cackley, and.

with this new population. It's relatively close to the Pacific Ocean, only five miles from San Jose and forty two miles from San Francisco. One of those returning through California is a petty officer. After being stationed in London and Ireland, is a Chief Commissary Stewart in the US Naval Reserve. He's back on American soil and someone has nicked his foot locker. He's gotten into the British way of speaking

being overseas as long as he was. They've stolen his foot locker, and what's inside his foot locker is very important. It will become important later in the story. There was no money in it, so he didn't lose any money, but he lost his white London Dairy Ireland Navy T shirt. His Navy medals were pinned on that, so he lost his medals as well. And then he lost a pair of navy slate gray trousers. That's all missing, and that will come into our story later on.

to get an extra tip. Back in nineteen forty nine, I mean, we have to remember this is forty five, so this is you know, life in forty five was not what we see life as in twenty twenty two. So she is trying to get a little more tip out of him, trying to figure out why he's not eating her. Boss Lewis would just as soon this guy get out, But he's just hanging out in this restaurant,

this little cafe. And you know, Sally had a husband who was lost overseas, and so this is the whole post war thing is going on in this restaurant, and she's wondering why this guy is not ordering anything to eat. He's just hanging out playing this big broadcast pinball game.

Now it's just after two o'clock. Now high school kids are starting to stream in coming into the restaurant, so she doesn't have any time to worry about this guy sitting at the counter anymore, wearing the white Londonderry Ireland team shirt. Suddenly she looks up and he's gone. This navy veteran with the white T shirt has gone on on the bigger and better things.

you know, they're walking home together. This, again, is nineteen forty five, not unusual to see kids walking alone on the way home from school. This isn't twenty twenty two, when parents have to feel like they have to come and protect their children all the way home from school. To their home. Right well, as Yvonne and Carol Anne are walking home, a blue sidan pulls up alongside them.

A man inside wearing a white Londonderry Ireland T shirt notices that or asks the girl rather, how are you doing? And the girls giggle and ask how can we can you help me? He says. What he says is that he and his sister need a babysitter for the afternoon. Oh, you know these kids is in nineteen twenty five. Again, kids are trained, they're raised to help grownups and to respect grown ups. Sure, but still Carol Anne, even though she's the younger of the pair, she knows something's wrong.

There's something just creeping her out about this guy in the blue sidan, and she grabs her sister and they run. Yvonne does look back and wave goodbye, and she sees the man in the blu Sidan doing a U turn in the street and he's driving back toward the school where she thinks the big kids go, Campbell Union High School.

her fifteenth birthday. She has brown, curly hair, blue eyes, five foot two and weighs one hundred and twenty pounds now this day, she's wearing a gabardine coat, a blue sweater, a white blouse, a red skirt, and just like her friends, she has two pairs of overlapping bobby socks on one red and the other color blue on each foot, and tan loafers. The socks they're red and the blue. This is what they do on game day. They wear two pairs of socks instead of just a pair of socks,

and red and blue those are the school colors. Right now. Like the other girls, Thora's carrying textbooks, her books from school. She has a zipper binder and a cow bell that she'll ring in support of the Campbell Union team. She fits right in with your friends, but she's kind of the leader of the packs here, okay. She is the one that always takes the lead. Two of her friends, Elaine and Catherine Band. Elaine Seeneca and Catherine Band. They're

fifteen years old, a little bit older than thora. Both have blonde hair and green eyes. And they see a blue sedan, a blue Plymouth, slowly coming up alongside the girls on Winchester Boulevard. Look, it looks to Eileen and Arlaine brother Elaine and Catherine, it looks like one of those cars that gangsters drive in the old nineteen forties movies that they would watch. I mean what they weren't old movies to these kids, but the movies that they go to see in the theater. It looks just like

a gangster car. They're thinking, actually, it's a thirty two car, nineteen thirty two, because you know, back in this day, you know, they shut down all the car manufacturing plants during the war, so nobody was driving a new car from the forties. Everybody was driving cars from the Well. The blue car pulls up alongside the girls and they look inside and there's a guy inside who's he's got thick, curly black hair, he's got a jaunty smile. He's a

good looking guy. Okay, the girls don't know what to do next. They look to Thora to take the lead, and even Rita Byerley, who's seventeen years old, the oldest in the crowd. She doesn't know what to do, but Thora giggles, shrugs her shoulders, and moves up to the car. The guy in the car again, he's a good looking guy. It kind of a quick, easy goofy smile, is how

the girls would later describe it. It's wearing a garrison hat with a water repellent cover, the US Navy style white tearshirt with a purple heart and a blue insignia bearing the words London Dairy, Ireland and pinned down the shirt are several service medals. Remember what was in that foot locker that was stolen back in October, Well, this is what we're looking at now. Okay, now, it's hardly unusual to see military veterans on the streets in Campbell.

Like we Saidlliams of them were working their way through Campbell into California and then into the United States. The man in the car, green eyes a good looking guy again. He smiles. He smiles at Thra He says, Hey, I need some help. My sister needs a babysitter. Could you just do this for a couple of hours, It won't take long, and I'm ready to pay you. He pulls a five dollar bill out of his shirt, out of his pocket. He says, I'm ready to pay you now.

Five bucks goes a long way with a teenager in nineteen forty five. That can buy a lot of fun in Campbell and she's going to the football game. He says, I only need you for thirty minutes. My sister and I just need to run a couple of errands, no more than half an hour, and then I'll drive you to the football game. You'll be there by halftime. He makes that promise. Thora looks back at her friends, takes a deep breath, looks back at the roll down window in the car and the five dollar bill in this

guy's hand, and she gets into the car. She looks out the window of her friends and says, don't forget to save me a seat. I'll see you soon, and they drive away.

She steps off the lawn. She steps, she's gonna go to the Mailbox's car comes by and nearly knocks her down. She catches herself on the way down and looks into the car through the passenger side window. Ella sees something she'll never forget. She sees a teenage girl, young, with bouncy curls in her brown hair, wearing a red skirt and a blue sweater. The child's face is pressed against the car's window as the girl claws furiously at the glass,

trying desperately to get out. Beyond the girl, Ellisi is a man, hatless with bushy hair, driving with both hands on the steering wheel. Ella let's go with the mailbox handle and sits down on the lawn. Her head falls forward as she tries to catch her breath. Then she looks up, realizing she'll never forget that girl's face because Ella has never seen such fear.

starts calling Thora's friends. One friend after another says, you know, they hate to say that Thora did anything wrong. They don't want to squeal on Thora, so to speak, but they do say that we were all on the way to the football game. Thora did get into a car with another man with a man, and they drove off and promised to be back at halftime. Now Lois is

very scared, and she continues calling Thora's friends. Half an hour into this, Frank, who was too old to serve in the war, but he still sees himself as a man of action, well respected in Campbell, he calls the police, the sheriff's deputies rather, and they start calling neighbors, and less than half an hour after they realize Sora is missing. Frank, Lois and as many neighbors as they can round up all start walking through the neighborhood in Campbell, calling out in vain Dora's name.

day a great work ethic. Okay, but now he's a good worker when he puts his mind to it. And he's a strong guy. He was a boxer as a teenager and did pretty well. He did some professional boxing, so he's got muscle, he's got coordination. And this day he swaggers up to the time clock at seven fifty five am, a full five minutes early, to begin to shift. This is not like mister mcmonagall at all. This is

a totally different Thomas. He listens to the clock clunking along, you know those old time clocks they would have, as his buddies put their cards in. He takes his turn and guess what his card is missing. His boss pulled the card, so he has to go to his boss ask for his card back, in effect, and ask for his job back. The boss is upset because he, you know, mcmonagall took a powder on him, so to speak, and he's been gone for a week. He hasn't been seen

for a week. They go back and forth and finally gets his Thomas gets his card back and he punches in and he goes back to work, talks to his friends and they're saying, hey, where have you been for the past week? What have you been doing? And Thomas leans on his shovel, tips his hat back with his left thumb, looks at them, smiles and says, out with a fifteen year old girl, that's where and oh yeah, a real cookie she was. You take us.

a pretty good idea. But he says, if you do your usual half job and decide to take a powder two hours into this, what am I left with? Thomas promises that he'll get it done. He's going to fill the dish in with dirt and concrete blocks and another half hour repleting, whining and promises. The boss gives in. He grants Thomas permission to leave the crew for a

day to start and finish the project. Eight hours. He's giving him to do this project, to fill in this ditch so that they can walk over it instead of around it.

Where are you going? And it says la. He responds, as in Los Angeles. He says, it's like you're reading the map in my head. So anyway, he tosses the car key of that blue Plymouth to Enna and just goes out the door. While Enna's tapping another cigarette to get the tobacco packed down nicely, Thomas is outside. He's nearly running down the street. He sees he's running toward a bus stop and he sees a bus to Los Angeles. He sprints and he gets on that bus and he

takes off on that bus. I'm not sure where he's going to end up, but he's thinking in the back of his mind, maybe I'll wind up in East Alton, Illinois, drop in on his family. That's where his family lives, and that's where he's from. East Alton, Illinois. So he leaves Enna at home, with the baby and the plymouth.

And the telegram has signed a friend at Campbell High School class of nineteen forty four. So now they think they've got a lead.

near Downeville say they've all been abandoned, hope. So you've got a search for two children going on at the same time. FBI agents around that case as well, while Frank and Lois are sitting at home in Campbell waiting for news. Now, going back to this telegram, we've got Sheriff William Emmig coming into the case. Now. They're looking hard at Long Beach because of that telegram. There's additional evidence she's alive and well, this is a break in

the case. They're thinking not a Kazakh cosmic seismic opening, but it's good news and it gives the sheriff's team a more substantial lead than they've had to date. Along with the telegram, Emigs says, a call to the Chamberlain family was placed from Long Beach Tuesday night to sixth around ten pm, and then another call from Long Beach rang the Chamberlain's home at nine in the morning yesterday. One of EMI's deputies asks who is calling Emmig responds

with a shrug. We don't know whoever was calling before the calls hung up, before the calls were completed. Now they've also discovered a guy who gets that. His name is George O'Neill. Phoned that telegram to Western Union Tuesday, claiming the Chamberlain girl was in Long Beach and he gave his address as the local YMCA. Unfortunately, nobody by that name is stated the y recently, so they're back to ground zero, back to where they started. But Emma assures his men that now they have hope, and the

Chamberlain family should have hope as well well. Frank and Lowers are not feeling as good about this as the shriff his. They hand deliver a statement to all the local newspapers that is, as they put it, an earnest appeal to the person responsible for Thora's disappearance to advise

us by letter or telephone that she's unharmed. And the parents also ask all other people who have are persons who have any information of any character as to the whereabouts of our daughter to communicate with us, and they list their phone number and their home address something that nobody would do in this day and age. Now, in conclusion, Frank and Lowis write, no one can appreciate the grief and anxiety they have been ours for the past few days.

For ours and the sake of all mothers and fathers, please try to help us an hour of need. And again they too, Frank and Laws are reading the story of Dickie Tom Sutton's family and their woes on page three of today as San Francisco Examiner, and they're thinking, you know, what could this be? What happens to us?

Were they given up on Dickie? Will anyone will they give up on thra And once you know, remember they gave their phone number out, their phone number and their address out, something we would never do in this day, I said parenthetically. Well, once word gets out that the search for the toddler Dickie has been called off, the Chamberlain family get so many crank phone calls they have to move out of their house to what's described as

an undisclosed location. And so now not only do they have a child missing, they have to move to a new home. They have to run escape their house and go to a new home and wait and pray that their daughter will be found alive.

interesting guy, one of the top FBI agents. He is such a top FBI agent that, despite Jander Hoover's mandate that all FBI agents be clean shaven, EJ has a thin pencil mustache that he refuses to shave off. And he's so good at what he does Hoover does not force him to shave it off. That's the kind of guy that EJ tinally is. Okay, And now so they the FBI is coming into this case, and he meets with the top cop in San Mateo, California, Robert em

and O'Brien. He became the city's second police chief two years ago. And O'Brien is everything that EJ is not. Okay. EJ is a former military man. He's like lean and strong, razor sharp, every hair in place on the top of his head, while O'Brien's muscular body is hidden by pounds of fat, his hair is wavy black. It never seems to want to stay still. He's a big guy. I mean you know that. You know, if a fight broke out in a bar, you would want him on your side. Okay,

but he still is everything that EJ is not. So neither of them feel like they're looking into a mirror as they're sitting across the table from each other, and they each have their own jurisdiction to worry about. You know, these guys are both alpha males. I guess there's a way to put it. They're not about to let down at all, but chief O'Brien knows that the primary motivation here is to find thora Chamberlain, so he is willing to let his guard down and starts giving EJ information.

He thinks there's a man that they should be looking at. He doesn't have any evidence, but a lot of circumstantial evidence is coming up that points him in this direction. He pushes an eight x twelve black and white photos toward EJ. He says, this is a fellow worth looking at, I think, and it is a picture of Thomas Henry mcmonagall. And this is where we start finding mcmonagall's problem the past.

And there are a lot of signs, you know, that would lead you to think that Thomas Henry mcmonagall, an ex con from Illinois by the way, living with his wife and San Matteo, is a guy you have to look at mcmonagall. I love this guy, but you know who mcmonical loves teenage girls. He's been after teenage girls. It's been a real problem in San Matteo. He's got a job as a bus driver and one of his route goes along a high school or near a high school where high school girls are getting on all the time.

He's constantly putting the moves on these high school girls. It gets so bad that they form the Thomas mcmonagall fan Club. The girls new and they think it's hilarious, but they don't want anything to do with this guy. Now. What they do occasionally is they'll set up dates with him and have him like you'll meet at this corner and we'll meet you there. Well, of course they stand him up, but they are the bushes laughing at him. Right, Okay, So mcmonagal's got some real problems here when it comes

to women. He's an ex town from Illinois. He's also got a real anger management problem. He gets into an argument with his boss and beats his boss up. He also is charged with attempted rape, and the attempted rape involved guess what a fourteen year old girl they did. The family did not press charges. But with all of this information, EJ. Connolly figures this has got to be his suspect number one. This is the guy that he wants to find, Thomas Henry mcmonagall.

You know different teams of agents as they come into different territories, different FBI agents offices will open up and they all work together. They'll work with local police, and they're following this guy, staying as close to him as possible. When Thomas starts hitch hiking, when he gets off the bus and starts hitch hiking, a couple of the FBI agents in a car actually pick him up and take him to where he wants to go. So that's how

close they were to this guy. They really kept in minded, really a strict surveillance the whole way.

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and they have their suspect. They have acknowledgments from witnesses to say that this is the man they do a photo lineup, they do a actual lineup. Pardon me, I'm getting ahead of myself a little bit. Tell us about the effort from the team to close around and capture Thomas mcmonical.

bus with this guy. A couple more agents are in a car behind them, so they're like right on this guy and Thomas Henry mcmonag they're not about to let him loose, and they pull into the bus stop. This is a day. But you know, one of the things I tried to do in this story was to put it all in context. Now, this is the day, A couple of days until Thanksgiving November twentieth, nineteen forty five, and Thomas is on this bus and they're headed back

to Los Angeles. He gets off the bus, or everybody gets off the bus except the bus driver, and Thomas is gone. How could this mean? How could he have vanished? Well, actually he fell asleep on the bus and they have to lead They pull him up and actually walk him off the bus. He's got a medical problem in that he tried to overdose. He took sedatives and tried to overdose. He tried to kill himself. So now they've got their prime suspect. They've got him, but he is totally incoherent

and they're afraid that he might die. So they've got to rush him to a hospital. What happens there in the hospital, he's treated and he comes back to life. He gets over it. The doctors, whose name is doctor Edmund D. Butler, examines Thomas when the FBI brings him in from the bus stop and says Thomas was suffering from sedative toxicity. In other words, he tried to overdose. They leaved him in the bus. In the hospital, they

never leave him alone. Of course, there's an agent in the hallway and EJ is pretty much setting up a residence in the hospital. Is December eighth, now nineteen forty five, ej is pacing up and down the hallway. Finally a nurse comes down to get him, and she tells him that the mcmonagall did take sleeping pills and overdose. It was close to his suicide. He almost died when they

pumped his stomach. If they hadn't rushed him there, if the bus had been delayed just a little bit, he would have died, or at least, at the very least, he would have suffered severe internal damage. But now his physical findings are good. On December eighth, his neurological findings are almost normal, and he is good to go, so to speak. And the doctor says, in a word, he's yours. And so now the agents have him. Okay, they have him. And this is where now it's time for a lineup.

They bring men about the same height, five foot nine to five foot eleven inches tall, half a dozen men in the early thirties. They all had bushy to curly black hair atop their heads. So and this is where they'll bring the girls in. These five girls, I mean teenage girls are suddenly if to them it's like they're in a Humphrey Bogart movie or a Spencer Tracy movie.

You know, they're in a lineup, looking at a lineup of people of men who may have taken their best friend, and each girl identified one after another, each girl identifies Thomas Henry mcmonagal as the guy who was in that blue sedan the Plymouth that drove away with thora on that day in November.

and mcmonagall is grinning this day. He is actually grinning, even though he does not think. EJ doesn't think he'll get a confession out of him. All of a sudden, mcmonagall cracks and he says, EJ thinks the guy has the look of the devil in his eyes. And Thomas looks up at the agents who are interrogating him and says, she's dead. These are the words they didn't want to hear. But he confesses that she is dead. Now this begun. This is where he gets into the first of many

stories about how he says Dora Chamberlain died. Now in this story he said that he admits that the girl was in his car. Says he took her to Santa Cruz on Highway seventeen and got off on Highway one close to the San Mateo County line. Why because the girl was not cooperating. I didn't have to go this way, he says. But she just wouldn't shut up. So what did Thomas do? He says, I just wanted to scare her to get her to shut up, So I reached into my guloup box and got my gun, a Colt

thirty two. And this is, by the way, a Colt thirty two. They found a Colt thirty two in that YMCA and Quincy, Illinois is part of there. So he says, I got the gun out, and then he says he's not a groggy again like he did when he got off the bus. Then he looks at EJ and says, if I shot her, that's where it took place. Hardly a confession, but it's close, okay, right, And again it looks like he's going to pass out while he's talking to her. Then Thomas says, I didn't want to shoot her.

That was never what I wanted to do. I kept driving with her in the car I drove, but he did shoot her. You know, he never says that he shot her. This is where it gets confusing with Thomas has all these stories. I kept driving with her in the car. I drove north on Highway One to Devil's Slide. That's where I pulled over. I got her body out of the car and rolled it off the cliff into

the water. And the Devil's Slide is about five hundred feet high, and they call it Devil's Slide because of all the landslides that come off that cliff into the Pacific Ocean. The water down there is swirling so hard that they figure that thora's body if it was thrown into the water. There it was ripped to pieces only a few days after she was murdered, maybe even a few hours, but still this is the best evidence they

have that Thorra is dead. Oh, by the way, Thomas also tells them what he did with the gun that he buried the slug from that one shot that he got out of his car. He dug it out of the wood post in his car, buried on under a tree. So he's telling him he's telling them where the evidence is. So he sent EJ sends one team out to the hot to where he says he hid the evidence. Another team goes out to Devil's Slide and EJ goes with them.

They've also called the navy. The Navy has sent a cracked team of divers just back from World War Two. They put that team into the water under Devil's Slide looking for Thora's body as they're going. As eg and his team are going down the cliff, they find a pair of socks, red sox a blue sock. So you know what we're talking about here. Thora's body probably was dragging down that cliff. Was it found in the water. No, the water was swirling so hard. These experienced navy divers

with World War Two experience. They were thrown around in the water. One guy was knocked unconscious twice by his head just slamming against the rocks. So they finally have to give up hope that they're going to find your body there. Meanwhile, you've got another team in the backyard of the mcmonoco home in San Matteo and they're using a shovel and a spade to dig up earth around a tree looking for a thirty two caliber slug. So

you've got this investigation really hitting high gear. Then one of the agents digs his hands into the earth and finds that slug. He's got the slug that Thomas said he buried there. So you've got some evidence. You still don't have a body, and through this whole story is going to be what complicates this investigation and the trial is they do not have a body. And this is before you had DNA evidence of any kind, and you really didn't have the kind of fingerprint technology that we have today.

He pulls them out of his pocket. Lois. The mother gasps and walks from the living room to a hallway. She stops and looks back over her shoulder at EJ. He follows. Lois leads him to a bedroom. Thora's bedroom where she had slept every night for the past fourteen nearly fifteen years. Lois opens a dresser drawer. It's filled with socks, red and blue socks, just like the socks in EJ's hand. Right now, the Bobby socks that looks just like the socks he's been carrying in his pocket

ever since Devil Slide. So now you've got to figure these socks are Thora's socks.

they find more evidence. In that ditch. They find a pair of slate gray trousers that was in that foot locker. They see Thora's brown shoes, her school books, a zipperbinder, and even the cow bell that she was going to ring in celebration at the November two football game. So now they've got just a ton of evidence. Oh and one more thing. They also dig up a thirty two caliber gun. Wow, and pieces of bloody upholstery from it would turn out from a car from a Plymouth.

tried to wash it out. I've got most of it, but I was afraid there was still some blood in the seams of the pants or maybe the pockets. So well, he admits I buried the trousers with the rest the bloody upholstery. He admits that he came out of the car. He has no problem confessing now because again it's moving him into center stage, keeping him in the spotlight.

The upholstery that is stayed with Thor's blood. He admits that all that he had to pull it out and bury it because you know, he knew that they would get back to the car eventually.

him up. And people have been strung up before recently in San Mateo as Actually, there was a radio station in Los Angeles back in the nineteen thirties organized a lynching party and lynched and led people and then broadcast the lynching live. This is the kind of atmosphere that we have going on here. Okay, now Thomas. Now Thomas is saying that I fell asleep and it was awakened by a gunshot, and that's when I discovered the girl

was gone. But then he says he can lead them to the body, and they organize this massive thing, all kinds of security so nobody, you know, so a sniper can't get him or anything. And he decided, he says he'll lead them to the body. A jury is about to be seated. But then he says he can't go. He decides that he can't go and do this. So it's always this on again, off again with Thomas, with

multiple confessions. And he explains he actually by this time he has confessed four times, and this day he says that on February first, nineteen forty six, he says that three of those four confessions were false.

and so he scrambles back up to the car. He's going to find the police and get the police out here to go to this to find this skeleton. Gets up to the car, his wife is gone, no sign of his wife. Well, now this gets into a whole thing with did Franklin Now Franklin, he doesn't he go right to the police. No, he actually sits down and takes a nap in the car. Then he gets up and finds the police. He figures his wife just wandered off.

They get the police, They come back that you know, this is where the FBI gets back into the case. And they go to this body, the skeleton with Thomas, and they say Thomas, is this Thorra Chamberlain. He says, no, this is somebody else that I killed. Actually, but this is somebody else, and yes, I did kill her. This is Dorothy Ross Jones, a twenty three year old woman who Thomas confessed to killing. Her body was discovered on a county beach near the cliff where Thomas had he'd

thrown Thora's body into the ocean. He confessed to killing Jones. He said they had met in San Francisco and soon began arguing. He killed her in the heat of the moment and Jones. Badly decomposed body was discovered during the search for Thora's body in April nineteenth, nineteen forty six. So now we have the body of Dorothy Ross Jones. But guess what we're missing. We're missing Franklin's wife. Where could she be. Well, now the police are thinking they

could have another murder on their hands. They're searching for his wife. They do find her body at the bottom of the cliff. So what the heck is going on here? Oh? Franklin immediately says I want to be taken in jail. He wants to be in jail for his own protection. He does not want to be out loose. He says, I'll take a lie detector test. He says, I did not kill her, but I need to go into jail for protection. Finally, they investigate this and decide that he

did not kill her. Actually, she'd been drinking. They had a bottle of whiskey up there in the car, and she just got drunk and fell off the cliff.

tears the jury up. He says, I remember I kissed Dora goodbye at the door that morning, the day she disappeared, and that was the last time I ever saw my little girl. Now, at the same time this is going on, you've got women who I think are old enough to know better, and girls who maybe don't have the history or maturity to make a rational judgment. They fall in love with Thomas Henry McMonigal. I mean, this is the kind of thing you might expect in twenty twenty two.

This happened in nineteen forty six, Frints, and I mean they literally the women rushing into the courthouse made literally broke down the doors of the courthouse fighting for seats to watch this trial and get as close to Thomas Henry mcmonagall as they possibly could. So this is just a wild scene. One of the reporters wrote, you'd think there was a sale on nylons going on. It was so crazy. And he wasn't really being i mean, knocking women any more than you might in nineteen forty six.

But they actually did have riots these days over women trying to get nylon stockings. But yeah, it was just like just an incredible scene there, big celebrity, you know, papa what we call paparazzi now everywhere. It was just an incredible scene of this trial.

return for his cooperation. He also testifies that EJ told him that people of Santa Clara are going to arect a memorial for Thora Chamberlain and promises, though, if you'll come clean and confess, I'll try to get the trial change to another county. So he just made this all up. There's not a bit of truth in any of it. But he did make it up. I mean he did testify to that. Now, as luck would have it. At this point, a member of the jury, Mabel Waters, collapses

in court. She just passes out and collapses, so they have to take a break. They break for lunch, and now Thomas comes back and he tells it. While they're outside waiting to go back into court, Thomas tells one of his San Quentin guards that he wants to confess. Thomas says, now that he did murder Thora, but he did not toss her body off the three hundred foot

high Cliffs of Devil's Spider in the Pacific. He says he wrapped Thora's body in a blanket, tied it up with rope, and then threw Thora into the water held back by the Crystal Springs dam at Dune's Beach. This is confession number five. They go out to the water, even though they don't put much stock in it. No, they never do find Thora's body.

body and he'll come back to life. Well, this is a real problem. Now what he's been sentenced to death. Now what happens if you bring him back to life. He's already served his penalty of death. So now if you bring him back to life, is it go free or do you have to kill him again. California state officials have no idea what's going on here, but the warden of San Quentin settles it. He says, there's no way I want a mad science setting up a laboratory in my prison. So but still the doctor says, I.

emotional scene. I mean, you know, he's a killer. You can't feel sorry for the guy, but it's a very emotional scene as they're leading him to the chamber, to the death chamber.

is his name. He They find a note that was passed Warden Duffy opened and that was passed to him by Thomas, and Thomas wrote, I Thomas Henry mcmonagall, in this last testimony to the people, declare that I did not shoot Thorra Chamberlain, and I did not throw her body over a cliff. I never made any confession that I shot Thora Chamberlain. In Santa Cruz County Warden Duffy refolded the paper and wonders, did we convict the wrong man. He also wonders if he should just throw the note

away or release it to the newspapers. He makes up his mind tosses a note away. Duffy tells his aid, we got the right man. Mcmonagall might say he didn't shoot Thora and toss her body off a cliff, but he never says he did not kill the girl. After all the stories mcmonagall crafted, how are we going to believe this one, Duffy says. So he crumples the note and tosses it to his aid for disposal. The paper that held Thomas Henry mcmonagall's last words would soon be ashes.

The aid would burn them, but he would remember the story. Father McAllister takes Thomas's corpse and goes next to a cemetery near San raph yell sad lonely journey he performs at service walks away, Priest of the Bible. Grave diggers tap down the earth over Thomas's chief Wooden't casket and that's the end. If Thomas, Henry mcmonagall, Frank and Lois Chamberlain, they simply say no comment when they're contacted by reporters. They don't want to talk about this. They want this

just to go away, if you will Enna. One of the journalists asks Enna if she believes her ex husband murdered Thra. Anna size and says to the reporter, what's the point. He confessed and there's nothing else to be done. She's holding the hand of their little girl, her and Thomas's daughter, born just a few days before Thorra disappeared. Anna looks over her shoulder at the reporter and says, perhaps it will all be for the best.