Not Just Evil: Murder, Hollywood, and California's First Insanity Plea

by David Wilson

  The teacher, Mary Holt, went to the office to meet face-to-face with the young man who had brought the news of the accident. She described the encounter with the suspect to the principal: “Mr. Cooper (the assumed name of Marion’s kidnapper) was very calm and courteous.” He told the two women he was employed by the First National Bank, as was Mr. Parker, and he offered to give them the phone number of the bank if they cared to confirm the reason he was there to pick up Marion Parker. His relaxed, almost detached attitude towards the whole situation lasted throughout his visit to the school. When he was introduced to Marion Parker he explained the situation once more, bending at the waist so she could hear him clearly: “Don’t cry, little girl, I will take you to your daddy.”

  On December 20, 1927, just a day after Marion Parker’s death, the Los Angeles Times printed a statement made by Susan Dorsey, the superintendent of the Los Angeles School District. It read as follows:

  Mrs. Holt had no authority to excuse any child from school. That is done by our vice principal and then only at the request of the child’s parents or guardian. But in this case there appeared to be an emergency when the man rushed in and claimed that there had been an accident and the child’s father was calling for her.

  I talked to Mrs. Holt and am satisfied that I would have acted as she did if I were confronted with the same circumstances. At the time, the vice principal, who is the person in authority entitled to excuse a child from class, was busy with the Christmas program and could not be reached in the few minutes that elapsed.

  The fact that nothing has ever befallen our school children in the past is evidence in itself that they are as safeguarded as is humanly possible.

  The statement aggravated an already agitated public. Few parents agreed with Superintendent Dorsey’s view of what had happened and what steps were still needed to safeguard the children under her care. Over the next few days, school attendance throughout the state of California fell dramatically.

  Despite the confusion, there was one man in the city of Los Angeles who instinctively understood what the death of Marion Parker was going to mean for the city, the state, and the nation. Mr. Asa Keyes, the elected district attorney for the city of Los Angeles, meticulously examined every detail of the kidnapping case. His initial motivation was not justice but opportunity. He felt this was the high-profile case he needed to assure his reelection.

  Keyes had spent the previous six weeks of his life putting together a case he hoped would generate political support. The case had its political downside, because it involved some of the most powerful men in Southern California. The crime was the largest fraud in the state’s history, described in the press as the C. C. Julian Petroleum Ponzi scheme. The suspects were accused of selling worthless stock to thousands of innocent investors. Some of the suspects unexpectedly praised Mr. Keyes in local newspapers by saying: “I don’t believe ten million dollars in his lap would make him violate his oath of office, he has a reputation for honesty that no man would dare question.”

  On the morning of December 20, 1927, District Attorney Keyes’s fate was taking him in a different direction. He cleared his desk of all the documents relating to the stock scandal to make room for the first of several meetings between himself, the chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, James E. Davis, and Herman Cline, chief of detectives. The three men spent several hours discussing the progress on the Marion Parker kidnapping case. Chief Davis and Chief Cline both agreed to assign two of their most experienced investigators, Dick Lucas and Harry Raymond, to Mr. Keyes to assist him in gathering evidence.

  Both detectives were physically powerful men, but more important to the district attorney was their willingness to work sixteen-hour days until the case was closed. Mr. Keyes knew their strengths and weaknesses and believed they would do whatever it took to arrest a suspect in the case. Their fixation would not only help Mr. Keyes free the city from fear, it would also bring him one step closer to fulfilling his political ambition of reelection. Keyes located an empty room in his office and ordered that the room be fitted with beds if the detectives needed a place to rest during their investigation.

  In contrast, Marion Parker’s father was not thinking of the future. Nothing on earth could nullify the suffering and pain associated with losing his child. Two months after the kidnapping he would testify he first came to realize the utter hopelessness associated with the kidnapping on December 15, 1927. It was the day he took a phone call from Naomi Britten, the school’s secretary, who was calling to see if the family wanted Marion’s twin sister sent home as well. After a few moments of conversation, Mrs. Britten realized she was actually speaking to Marion’s father, the man she believed was hospitalized. Mr. Parker quickly responded to her questions with growing concerns of his own. No, he had not been in a car accident, no, he was not injured, and no, he had not sent a man to pick his daughter up from school.

  Mr. Parker was under no illusions as he put down the phone and turned to his wife to break the news as gently as possible. His efforts failed miserably. Geraldine Parker fainted after hearing her daughter was missing, possibly kidnapped. For the next couple of weeks Mrs. Parker was watched over by friends and physicians and Mr. Parker was left to deal with the ever-increasing presence of the Los Angeles Police Department in and around his home.

  Because the identity of the kidnapper was not immediately known, Detective Lucas and Raymond began their interim report with a timeline of events, starting with the phone call from Marion’s school to the Parker’s home on 1621 South Wilton Place. They logged into their report a telegram containing one demand: “Do positively nothing till you receive special delivery letter.” It was signed: “Marion Parker and George Fox.”

  The police at the scene asked Mr. Parker a series of increasingly difficult questions about the identity of the man who called himself George Fox. Mr. Parker could only shake his head, telling the detectives that he could not help them. In all of his life, he had never known or met anyone named George Fox. The police found this hard to believe even when it came from a grief-stricken father, so they notified police headquarters to run the name through their database of known criminals and then waited for a reply.

  • • •

  As the drama surrounding the Marion Parker murder continued to make headlines, an event occurred in Canada that shifted the media attention in a different direction. On Sunday morning, January 9, 1927, in the province of Montreal, Canada, the once-famous Laurier Palace Theater opened its doors to over eight hundred excited children. They came from all over the city to see a special matinee screening of a new silent movie entitled, Get ’Em Young. Just moments after the movie projector lit up the darkened theater, the decorative hallways filled with thick black smoke. When the fire alarm was sounded, the response was almost immediate because the fire station was only a few hundred feet from the theater.

  It took weeks for fire investigators to determine that the cause of the fire was a discarded cigarette in the basement of the building. In the official report, authorities give credit to the few adults in the audience for their efforts to direct children to the nearest exits. But firemen did find the bodies of seventy-six children who had died from asphyxiation. The reason for the deaths was immediately apparent. Most of the bodies were recovered near an exit door illegally locked from the outside with steel chains.

  Canadian newspapers reported that the funeral procession for the young victims of the fire was observed by over fifty thousand citizens who had come to pay their respects. At the church service following the procession, Father Georges Gauthier, the archbishop of Montreal, asked his audience a rhetorical question: “Why was such a place of pleasure allowed to remain open on the Lord’s Day?” He also raised the question of the propriety of allowing children to watch motion pictures in the first place. Days after he spoke those words, the Roman Catholic Church of Canada took it upon themselves to start a campaign to prohibit anyone under the age of sixteen from entering a cinema house without being accomp
anied by an adult. Their reasoning was based on the belief that motion pictures: “ruined the health of children, weakened their lungs, troubled their imagination, excited their nervous system, hindered their studies, and led to immorality in general.”

  Within a year of the tragedy, following numerous sermons and speeches throughout Canada, the law against children entering theaters without an adult went into effect and remained the law of the land for thirty-three years.

  As millions of Americans read reports about the tragedy in Canada, the entire Northeast was recording record-breaking amounts of rainfall from one continuous storm. Farmers from as far off as Tennessee and Missouri were complaining to government agencies that their soil was no longer absorbing rainwater, and by the end of March hundreds of small tributaries of the Mississippi River were overflowing in at least a dozen different states. One newspaper, the Memphis Commercial-Appeal, wrote: “All along the Mississippi, considerable fear is felt over the prospect for the greatest flood in history.”

  On Good Friday, 1927, these fears were realized when the banks of the Mississippi River widened and elevated to previously unrecorded levels. In the process of flowing over the established system of levees, the storm waters “killed 246 people in seven different states while displacing 750,000 people from their homes.” The flooding eventually covered and ruined a staggering twenty-seven thousand square miles.

  A few weeks later, off the coast of Providence Town, Massachusetts, thirty-seven United States sailors died when their submarine mysteriously sank to the ocean floor. Across the Atlantic, the citizens of Great Britain were trying to deal with an influenza epidemic that had claimed more than one thousand lives in the first week of what would be a yearlong health crisis.

  More dispiriting news came from China, where a massive earthquake measuring 8.6 on the Richter scale had killed two hundred thousand citizens and left millions more homeless. In the ensuing weeks, thousands more would die from disease, exposure, and starvation, because rescue efforts by the Chinese government would fail miserably.

  During the suffering and despair, Americans still found reasons to celebrate. Charles Lindbergh became a new cultural icon when he flew alone and nonstop from New York to Paris in a plane named the Spirit of St. Louis. From Detroit, the Ford Motor Company, one of the country’s largest employers, announced the date for the delivery of their mass-produced Model T. The first transatlantic telephone call from New York to London was placed and received with complete clarity. In the Midwest, work on Mount Rushmore started days after the Holland Tunnel opened for traffic connecting the crowded New York City with the ever-expanding state of New Jersey.

  On the West Coast, in Southern California, Warner Brothers, Universal, and Paramount announced details of a new process in filmmaking. The process involved integrating pictures with sound. Ground zero for the development of this new technology was a small city on the outskirts of Los Angeles, a scarcely populated community that would soon become known worldwide as Hollywood.

  There, among the vast, wide-open spaces, every major motion picture studio built sound stages, working seven days a week and around the clock trying to fulfill the nation’s growing desire for films using audible dialogue, sound effects, and music. This overnight transformation made silent films a dead art. Great actors like Charles Chaplin, Gloria Swanson, Mary Pickford, Ethel, John, and Lionel Barrymore, who had captured the collective imagination of the nation, were faced with a tumultuous challenge. Would their voices be accepted by the public, or would they take their places on the cutting room floor alongside the many talented writers, producers, and directors who were unable to adapt?

  In the midst of all this change and turmoil, a young man named William Edward Hickman found great comfort and solace sitting in the darkened back row of a movie theater. His need to escape into the fantasy world of film soon became part of his daily routine. He moved from Kansas to Los Angeles in an effort to be closer to the source of his amusement, and was more than willing to commit whatever petty crimes would give him the twenty-five cents a day he needed to indulge his addiction.

  For the price of admission he could watch two movies, a cartoon and—the latest additional to the theater experience—a newsreel that included a voiceover description of what was being shown on the screen. Sitting alone in the theater, he would identify with the characters on-screen. He most strongly identified with criminals who appeared to get what they wanted when they wanted it. For him the vision of mean-spirited gangsters meant freedom from domination and control by others. It was a vision that was becoming all-consuming. The trip to the theater became a part of his daily routine, and the three dollars and twenty-five cents he needed each week to feed his addiction became the justification for a life of crime.

  • • •

  The lead detective on the first day of the investigation of the murder of Marion Parker was Chief Inspector Joseph Taylor. He was a senior investigator in the homicide division and worked directly with the chief of detectives. Because Asa Keyes was immediately involved in the case, Taylor shared responsibility for the investigation with Detectives Lucas and Raymond, who were working directly for the district attorney. It was an awkward allegiance, and both teams knew they were being set up to take the blame if the case was not solved quickly.

  The district attorney’s detectives had one distinct advantage over Inspector Taylor; they had hindsight. They had heard how Mr. Parker became increasingly agitated during the first forty-eight hours after the kidnapping by what he considered a slow-moving, unproductive investigation. His agitation made Lucas and Raymond suspicious, and the victim’s father was included on the first list of suspects.

  On instructions from the district attorney, Lucas and Raymond reviewed and documented every move made by Inspector Taylor, and concluded that his team had been remarkably professional from the beginning stages of the inquiry. Before arriving at Parker’s home, the inspector had ordered the victim’s phone tapped and put all police personnel on full alert. He also notified and instructed all Western Union offices and post offices in Southern California to contact police if anyone tried sending a telegram or special delivery letter to Parker’s residence. Police discovered that the kidnapper sent two telegrams and one special delivery letter before the alert went into effect.

  Less than forty-five minutes after the first telegram was delivered, a knock on the door of Parker house brought the second of the two telegrams. It read: “Marion secure. Use good judgment. Interference with my plans dangerous.” Again the telegram was signed: “Marion Parker and George Fox.” Taylor immediately checked the address of the sender and found it to be fictitious.

  When District Attorney Keyes read Detectives Lucas and Raymond’s initial report, the thing about the situation that disturbed him most was how the grief-stricken Mr. Perry Parker had pleaded with Inspector Taylor to allow him to pay the kidnapper without interference. As in the case of Dr. Wagner, District Attorney Keyes was a friend of Mr. Parker. They knew each other from childhood, and Keyes had known Marion and her twin sister from birth. The district attorney noted that Chief Inspector Taylor suggested to Mr. Parker that the police might actually apprehend those involved in the abduction before it was necessary to furnish the criminals with money. Keys agreed with his detectives that Mr. Parker needed to remain on the list of possible suspects.

  Inspector Taylor and Mr. Parker were discussing the issue of ransom at the Parker home when they heard a strong knock at the front door. A United States postman with a special delivery letter sent from the main post office in downtown Los Angeles delivered the note everybody was waiting for:

  DEATH

  P. M. PARKER

  Use good judgment. You are the loser. Do this. Secure 75 $20 gold certificates U. S. Currency 1500 dollars at once. KEEP THEM ON YOUR PERSON. GO ABOUT YOUR DAILY BUSINESS AS USUAL. Leave out police and detectives. Make no public notice. KEEP THIS AFFAIR PRIVATE. Make no search. Fulfilling these terms with the transfer of the currency will secure the
return of the girl.

  FAILURE TO COMPLY WITH THESE REQUESTS MEANS NO ONE WILL EVER SEE THE GIRL AGAIN. Except the Angels in Heaven. The affair must end one way or the other within 3 days. 72 Hrs.

  You will receive further notice. BUT THE TERMS REMAIN THE SAME.

  FATE

  If you want aid against me ask God, not man.

  The kidnapper had made an effort to give credence to his demands by allowing Marion Parker to write a simple statement to her parents in her own handwriting:

  Dear Daddy and Mother: I wish I could come home. I think I’ll die if I have to be like this much longer. Won’t someone tell me why this has to happen to me. Daddy please do what this man tells you or he’ll kill me if you don’t.

  Your loving daughter,

  Marion Parker

  Mr. Parker was clearly traumatized by the contents of the message. He knew he had broken the kidnapper’s first demand by notifying the police as soon as he became aware of his daughter’s disappearance. Police could not decide if his emotional reaction to the note removed him from the suspect list or if it was simply a ploy to deflect attention. Parker claimed that all he wanted was to have his daughter returned home safely and that he was prepared to do anything to make that happen. He claimed the amount of ransom money and the apprehension of those responsible did not concern him.

  After several hours of heated discussion, Mr. Parker persuaded the LAPD to work behind the scenes while he fulfilled the terms of the ransom note. As instructed he went to work the next day at his usual time and gathered 75 twenty dollar gold certificates. At the end of the day he went home and waited for the kidnapper to give him further details. The first of several phone calls came at 8:00 p.m. Mr. Parker listened carefully to the instructions.