Buzzfeed Unsolved: The Curious Case of the Lady in the Lake Killings
FOGGY: Welcome to Buzzfeed Unsolved, and today we’ll be covering the curious case of the Lady of the Lake killings. A fair warning, this story contains discussions of rape, violent death and violence toward women, as well as suicide and suicide attempts. Let’s get started.
FOGGY: On June 11, 1945, Stella Williams and her two young daughters, Sylvia and Eva, were walking along Echo Park Lake in Echo Park, in Los Angeles, California, near the infamous Lady of the Lake statue, when eight-year-old Sylvia noticed something floating in the water. On closer inspection, a horrified Stella realized it was the body of a woman. She quickly removed her children from the scene, then contacted police from the nearest payphone. Upon arriving at the scene, police were quick to find the body, which Mrs. Williams confirmed as the same one she and her daughters had found. Police could not identify the body, but an appeal to the public would eventually result in local woman Alma Young coming forward and identifying it as that of her sister-in-law, thirty-five-year-old Elizabeth Walker. An examination and autopsy performed by police coroner Frank Meltzer determined that Walker had been killed roughly four days before her body was found. Bizarrely, her shoes had been switched, with her left shoe placed on her right foot and vice-versa, a detail the police chose not to make public at the time. This will become important later. Mrs. Walker had been stabbed seven times, however, Dr. Meltzer found her lungs filled with water, indicating that she had still been alive when she was placed into the water, and concluded that she had drowned. This meant that she must have entered the lake not long after she was stabbed, and that the stabbing probably took place somewhere near the lake. After having identified her body, her family revealed that she had been reported missing on June 8, a mere three days before her body was discovered, something LAPD records would confirm. On the morning of June 7, Mrs. Walker had dropped her three children, eight-year-old Philip, more commonly called Pip, six-year-old Elizabeth, better known as Elise, and three-year-old Arthur, nicknamed Artie, off at the home of her mother, Katherine Young, at around seven-thirty a.m., as she usually did before beginning her 8 a.m. shift at a nearby airplane factory, which typically lasted until 7 p.m. At first, Mrs. Young thought nothing of it when her daughter failed to retrieve the children at around her usual time of 7:30, as it was not terribly unusual for her daughter to be late. As she usually did on nights when this occurred, Mrs. Young first put three-year-old Artie, bed at 8:00, then, when she didn’t hear from her daughter by 9:00, began preparing six-year-old Elise and eight-year-old Pip for bed. When their mother still hadn’t arrived to collect them and their younger brother by 9:30, Mrs. Young put both of the older children to bed as well, thinking that they would stay the night at her house, as they generally did when their mother had to work especially late. However, when 10:30 came and went, and Mrs. Young still hadn’t heard from her daughter, she began to feel alarmed, as the latter always stopped by or called to inquire about her children’s behavior and their and her parents’ well-being, regardless of how late it was. When 11:00 came and went, and there was still no word from her daughter, Mrs. Young felt fairly certain something was wrong, and once 11:30 came and there was still no word, however, she was convinced of it. However, her husband was also late in coming home that night, and she was unwilling to leave her grandchildren alone. She attempted to contact the airplane factory where both her husband and Elizabeth, along with Elizabeth’s older sister, Jean Brown, and sister-in-law, Alma, worked. However, she was informed that Elizabeth had left the factory hours ago at around her usual time of 8 p.m., and that her husband was on his way home, having opted to work late. Now even more convinced that something was wrong, Mrs. Young first called Jean, then Alma, but neither had heard from Elizabeth since they had last seen her at work earlier that day. Mrs. Young then called her oldest daughter, Katherine “Kate” Davis, but she had not heard from her sister since the previous evening. As Mrs. Davis, Mrs. Brown, and the younger Mrs. Young all had children of their own, they were unable to assist the elder Mrs. Young any further in her search for her missing daughter. At around this time, roughly 11:45, however, James Young, Mrs. Young’s husband and father of Kate, Jean, and Elizabeth arrived home, and was told of the situation by his wife. He immediately went back out to search for his daughter, but was unable to locate any trace of her, even after being joined in the search by his two sons-in-law, Charles Davis and Timothy Brown. The next morning, at around 7 a.m., Mr. Young went to the police station and reported his daughter missing. However, as we have already seen, her body was discovered three days later, on June 11, 1945, by Stella Williams and her daughters. Making matters even more tragic, the Youngs had already lost their only son, James Young, Junior, Elizabeth’s older brother and husband of Alma Young, who you may remember identified Elizabeth’s body. James, Junior, or “Jayo” as he was fondly known by his family, had been killed in the Battle of Berlin in April of that year, just two months before Elizabeth was killed. Elizabeth’s murder meant the loss of their two youngest children for James and Katherine Young. Additionally, Elizabeth’s husband, Philip Walker, had been severely wounded in the Battle of Berlin, and was still recovering in a British hospital at the time his wife was killed. He would arrive home on June 21, 1945, just over a week after the discovery of Elizabeth’s body, after not having seen her since he was sent to fight in Europe in March of 1942. Her funeral would be held the following Sunday, June 24, 1945, having been delayed so he could at least be present to see his wife laid to rest. He would go on to sum up his family’s sad situation, saying, quote, “I went overseas to serve my country one month before the birth of my youngest child. He has never met me. My daughter barely remembers me, and what she and my oldest son do remember, is the strong, handsome, capable man I was before. Now I have to walk with a cane because my right leg doesn’t work right, and I can’t bend the fingers in my right hand correctly, meaning I have to learn to do everything left-handed. I am partially blind, and my face has been scarred so that I barely resemble the man I was when I left. My children cry when they look at me, and I cannot blame them. To them, I must look like a monster. I cannot chase them around the house, or play ball with my son, or be the knight who saves my little girl from dragons. I have become a stranger to them. They have horrible nightmares, but the older ones are ashamed to tell me about them, as they feel they have to be strong, and the youngest is afraid to talk to me because he has not met me, and I do not fit the image of his father he has grown up with, in terms of either looks or personality. Even if I did, I would still be a complete stranger to him at the end of the day. I, too, have nightmares, both about what I witnessed in the war, and what happened to my wife. I try to hide it from the children, but they know, and it makes them even more afraid. Elizabeth and I had talked a great deal, both before I left and through letters afterwards, about what would happen if I died and she was forced to carry on raising our children without me, but the idea of her dying and my carrying on without her never once came up. My children are left without a mother, and with a father who is a virtual stranger to them, and who also cannot get work to provide for them due to war injuries. My mother- and father-in-law have already lost a son to this war, two of my sisters-in-law, a brother, and the third, a husband, and now they have also lost a daughter, a sister, a dear friend. My wife’s sisters had only just gotten through the difficulties of seeing their own husbands fight in the war, and gotten to experience the joy of having had them both return home safely, only to have it tempered by the loss of their sister, and their children, the joy of their fathers’ return by the loss of an aunt. Now, Goddammit, we want answers. We want Elizabeth’s killer found, and we want him to pay,” end quote. Alma Young, Elizabeth’s sister-in-law and the widow of her late brother James, Junior, also spoke about the loss of her sister-in-law, with whom she had been quite close since childhood, saying, quote, “Elizabeth and I helped each other through the Depression growing up, we helped each other through our husbands being gone during the war, maybe never to come home, she helped me through it when my brother Roland died at Monte Cassino, we helped each through losing Jay… I just can’t imagine life without her,” end quote.
MATT: Holy shit, this family seems cursed.
FOGGY: Yeah, they’ve had some bad luck here. Though, it does get a little better, if you’ll let me go on.
MATT: Oh, please do.
FOGGY (resuming narration): Philip Walker would eventually remarry, to war widow Viola Miller, who herself had two daughters, Lilian and Arlene, though his injuries left him unable to have any more children of his own. Alma Young would also remarry, to Joseph Graham, and have four more children, Joseph, Junior, called Joe, Jack, Roland, and Elizabeth, better known as Beth, in addition to her two children with her first husband, James Young III, better known as Trey, and Alma, better known as Allie. However, Elizabeth Walker’s murder would never be solved. In the meantime, a second body had already been found by the time Philip Walker returned home. This time, the discovery was made by friends Dorothy Campbell, Rose Hall, Irene Morgan, and Ann Williams, all women in their early- to mid-twenties, who were having a picnic together, again near Echo Park Lake, near the Lady of the Lake statue, on June 15, 1945, when Morgan spotted something floating in the water and quickly realized it was a dead body. She immediately pointed it out to her companions. The four friends used a large stick to draw it to shore, as a crowd began to gather. The four women quickly flagged down two LAPD officers, Albert White and Harry Johnson. The body was again examined by Frank Meltzer, the same coroner who had examined Elizabeth Walker’s body, while appeals were sent out to the public for help in identifying the body. Oddly, the one to identify this body was the victim’s landlady, Mrs. Nannie Wood. Mrs. Wood was able to confirm the body as belonging to a tenant of hers, twenty-seven-year-old Minnie King, but knew little else about the victim, and recommended the police speak to another of her tenants, Violet Allen, who she stated had been close friends with King. Allen further confirmed King’s identity, and was indeed able to provide police with more information about King’s background. King was from Stamford, Connecticut, was the youngest of three children of Edmond King, a well-to-do furniture salesman, and his wife, Mary King, nee Robinson. Prior to moving to California, King had been married, in January of 1942, at the age of twenty-three, to twenty-four-year-old Richard Wilkins, who had been drafted the previous month and subsequently been sent to war in February, and was later killed in the Battle of Bataan that April. Following news of his death, King had moved to Los Angeles in June of 1942, hoping for a new beginning, and had begun working as a seamstress in a Fraser’s clothing factory. Tragically, as we know, this ultimately lead to her death. So, who killed her? As with Elizabeth Walker, King’s shoes had been switched so that they were on the wrong feet, a detail which, if you will recall, the police had not made public. This strongly indicated that the two women had fallen prey to the same killer. Who this killer was, however, proved difficult to determine. Dr. Meltzer again performed the autopsy, and found that King had been stabbed ten times. Unlike Walker, King had no water in her lungs, indicating that she was already dead when she was placed in the water. The cause of death was determined to be blood loss, and Dr. Meltzer believed she had been killed roughly three days prior to being found, which would have placed her date of death on June 12, the day after Walker’s body was discovered. King had first been reported missing by her friend Violet Allen two days before the discovery of her body. Oddly, Walker and King had little in common, apart from the manner of their death. Both had had husbands who fought in the war, but whereas Walker’s husband had fought in Europe and survived, albeit severely injured, King’s had fought in the Pacific front and had been killed early on. Both women also had brothers who fought, however, in a reversal of the previous circumstances, King’s older brother, Edmond, Junior, had survived the war, whereas Walker’s had been killed. Moreover, having husbands and brothers who served overseas was nothing unusual at the time. Additionally, Walker and her husband had been childhood sweethearts, whereas King’s marriage had followed a whirlwind romance. According to King’s older sister, Mary Rose Knight, King had been questioning the wisdom of her marriage even before her husband, Richard Wilkins, had been killed. Knight said of the relationship, quote, “Minnie was swept up in the romance of it all, being courted by a handsome, brave soldier. I think that, after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, she and Richard both felt like, if they didn’t get married now, they might never get the chance. I think at first, she saw a certain romanticism in hardly getting any time with her husband, instead getting long letters from overseas. As time went on, though, the letters got shorter, and there were fewer of them, and she started to see, they had barely known each other, and had never really been in love, and she started to question things. She started to feel tied down, and like maybe, she’d tied him down, too. Then she saw in these letters that he had all these expectations of her, being a housewife, staying mostly at home, and that kind of life wasn’t for Minnie, at least, not yet. Then he died, and she felt guilty, but also relieved, I think, on some level, and that of course led to more guilt. At the same time there was some grief, there, too, because she’d liked him a lot, and he’d been good to her, and I think she felt that maybe, given some time, she could have learned to love him. She was confused, so she needed to put some time and distance between her and Richard, and what they had, and that’s why she left for California, to start again,” end quote. King was an outsider in Los Angeles, having no family there, and no friends when she had first arrived, whereas Walker had been born and raised there, as had her husband and most of his family, as well as her siblings, parents, and most of her grandparents. Walker was thirty-five, whereas King was twenty-seven, and while Walker had been married ten years at the time of her death, King’s marriage had lasted only three months and had ended in her husband’s death three years earlier. Walker was eight years older than King, and whereas Walker had three children and was a devoted mother, King was childless. Both had taken jobs due to the war, and were described as diligent in their work, but whereas Walker worked in an airplane factory, King was employed by a well-to-do clothing company. Walker was from a lower-middle class family, while King was from an upper-middle class family. In short, police could find little to tie the two women together. So, who would want both women dead? Police suspected a serial killer, but bizarrely, the killings stopped after King was murdered. In order for a murderer to be classified as a serial killer, they must have slain a minimum of three victims. Nonetheless, Detective Inspector Andrew Henry, the LAPD detective in charge of the case, felt certain that they had a would-be serial killer on their hands, even after two years came and went with no more murders took place matching the profile of the Lady of the Lake killings. In the months following the two murders, Detective Henry held four press conferences and spoke multiple times to the press and public regarding the murders, however, the killer was never found. Henry was so obsessed with solving the case that he took drastic action which, ironically, would end up ensuring that it ultimately became mostly forgotten about. In June of 1947, two years to the month after the bodies of Elizabeth Walker and Minnie King were discovered, Henry’s higher-ups in the LAPD informed him that they were pulling funding from the investigation, much to Henry’s fury. Not long after, on June 19, 1947 to be precise, the body of 29-year-old Jane Scott, a scientist for the Isodyne Energy Corporation, would be found in Echo Park Lake, the same lake where, if you will recall, the bodies of Walker and King had been found two years prior. However, this time, a woman’s dead body was far from the most bizarre detail about the case. Despite it being the hottest part of the month of June, in Los Angeles, California, both Scott’s body and the lake itself were frozen solid.
MATT: WHAT!?!?!
FOGGY: Yeah, I said this time it was weird. And it’s only going to get weirder, so strap in.
MATT: How can it possibly get weirder than a lake being completely frozen in southern California in the middle of June!?!?!
FOGGY: Oh, you’ll see.
MATT (taking a deep breath, leaning back in seat): Okay.
FOGGY (resuming narration): Once her body was thawed enough to be examined, it was discovered that, as with Walker and King, Scott’s shoes had been switched to the wrong feet, and she had been stabbed multiple times. The bizarreness of the case led the LAPD to seek help from the newly-formed Strategic Scientific Reserve, or SSR, the precursor to the modern-day top-secret organization known as S.H.I.E.L.D. The head of the L.A. branch of the SSR, Daniel Sousa, in turn contacted the original New York City branch of the SSR, where he had worked up until the previous year, when he had been promoted to head of its L.A. division, and requested they send an agent to assist in the investigation. They sent Agent Margaret “Peggy” Carter, who, along with the late billionaire Howard Stark, would later go on to found and run S.H.I.E.L.D. When speaking to Sousa and Carter about the matter, Detective Henry told them about the previous murders two years before, and told them he was certain Jane Scott was a victim of the same killer, as her shoes had been switched, a detail which had never been made known to the public. However, further investigation by Agent Carter would uncover a shocking truth. As previously mentioned, Scott had been a scientist for the Isodyne Energy Corporation. Doing some digging at the company, Agent Carter discovered that the owner of the company, Calvin Chadwick, a wealthy industrialist who was also running for United States Senate at the time, had been having an affair with Scott. Chadwick was married to famed two-time Oscar-nominated actress Whitney Frost. Scott’s death was actually the result of her coming into contact with zero matter, a highly dangerous substance with mysterious properties that had been discovered during the war, which scientists at Isodyne were still in the process of studying. Fearing the company’s reputation if word got out of Scott’s death, and wanting to continue their studies of zero matter, Chadwick and Frost had approached Detective Henry, who Carter had learned had a reputation in underground circles for helping to cover up crimes of negligence for the right price. When the couple asked for his help, Detective Henry saw an opportunity to reopen the Lady of the Lake murder investigation. He himself had stabbed Scott after she had already died, switched her shoes, and placed her body in the lake, in order to make it appear as though whoever killed Walker and King was back. However, the results of Scott’s contact with zero matter were so intense, they not only caused her body to freeze, it also caused Echo Lake to turn to ice when her body was placed there. Not only that, but Detective Henry and Dr. Frank Meltzer, who performed the autopsy, and who you may remember as having also done the autopsies on Walker and King, also fell sick, and both soon died from mere contact with her body. Agent Carter also suffered some effects from contact with Scott’s body, though she thankfully recovered and was able to live a full life, and no one else died as a result of being near Scott’s body or Echo Park Lake. However, the entire incident also set off a bizarre chain of events that we can’t get into here, due to time constraints. Suffice to say, the murders of Elizabeth Walker and Minnie King were largely overshadowed by the occurrences surrounding Jane Scott’s death. Frost and Jason Wilkes, another scientist at Isodyne, also fell prey to zero matter's effects, but were ultimately saved, though it was said that Frost was never again mentally stable afterwards, and the fallout from the death of Jane Scott and it's aftermath meant her career in Hollywood was over. Her husband, Calvin Chadwick, had also been killed as a result of his contact with zero matter. Jason Wilkes, however, went on to live a long and fulfilling scientific career, though, due to his status as as African-American in the 1940s and '50s, it was some time before his work came to be recognized.
MATT: I have a question.
FOGGY: Yes?
MATT: If Jane Scott's body was frozen, how did Detective Henry manage to stab her?
FOGGY: I’m not sure, man. I think, maybe her body just kept getting colder and colder. Like, the effects of the zero matter didn’t happen all at once, they just kept getting worse, even after she died.
MATT: Ah, okay. So, how’d they get her body out of the lake? Hell, how’d they even find her body?
FOGGY: You know, I don’t actually know. I guess I’ll have to do some more research on that.
MATT: Yeah, I guess so.
FOGGY: Or, you know, you could do the research. You’re pretty good at research.
MATT: You trying to butter me up now, buddy?
FOGGY: Well… yes. Is it working?
MATT (after brief reflection): You know, it kind of is. Just… just a little bit. (FOGGY laughs.)
FOGGY: You know, I just had a thought, this whole case, with the frozen body and the frozen lake and the zero matter, it just, it all sounds like something based on a comic book, doesn’t it?
MATT: You know, it really does.
FOGGY (resuming narration): Getting back to the murders of Walker and King, it’s time to look at some suspects. Our first suspect is Thomas Denton, a war veteran who, in 1945, when the killings of Walker and King took place, was twenty-nine years old. In March of 1943, Denton had accidentally shot himself in his right foot while cleaning his rifle, resulting in an infection that necessitated that his foot be amputated. However, the doctor had first amputated his *left* foot by mistake, leading to the loss of both his feet. Curiously, when he was fitted with prosthetic feet, the same doctor initially placed what should have been the right foot on Denton’s left leg, and the left foot on his right leg.
MATT: Who is this doctor? He sure is messing up a lot.
FOGGY (chuckling): I know, right? You’ve got to wonder how he kept his job after that.
MATT: *Did* he keep his job after that?
FOGGY: You know, I actually don’t know. In his – in his defense, there is a war going on, he’s got a lot of badly injured patients, he must have a lot on his mind, he’s gotta be really tired.
MATT: That still doesn’t make it right.
FOGGY: No, it doesn’t, but you – you can imagine what he must be going through. I’m not justifying it, I’m just saying, we should reserve a little of our judgement here, considering what he must be experiencing.
MATT: That still doesn’t make it okay.
FOGGY: No, it doesn’t.
FOGGY (resuming narration): The incorrect placement of Denton’s new prosthetic feet, in addition to rumors that he had shot himself deliberately to escape the battlefield, resulted in Denton being cruelly mocked by some of his fellow patients at the army hospital, though soldiers from Denton’s unit later testified to the truth of his story. While the problem was eventually fixed, and the correct prosthetic feet put on the correct legs, the whole ordeal was said to have left Denton quite bitter. To further add insult to injury, Denton had also been a professional runner prior to the war, and in fact had been while on his way to joining an Olympic track team. Additionally, he had been engaged to professional ballroom dancer Della Hart, and the two reportedly had loved dancing together, with Denton occasionally filling in as her partner. However, in April of 1944, two years after Denton had been shipped out and while he was still recovering in a hospital in Greenwich, England, Hart had broken off their engagement, having fallen in love with her regular dance partner, Edward White, whom she soon went on to marry. Understandably, this experience also left Denton angry and resentful. Less understandable were his actions on June 25, 1944, two months after Denton himself returned home, when he confronted Hart and White in their driveway in front of their two children, two-year-old Elbert and three-month-old Dora. Denton pointed a pistol at the couple and threatened to kill both Edward and Della White and take the children to raise as his own, claiming that they, quote, “should have been my children, and that means they belong to me, by right,” end quote. Luckily, the couple were able to escape in their car with the children. As the Whites were the only witnesses to this act, apart from their children, who for obvious reasons were unable to testify, ultimately, no charges were brought against Denton, despite past claims of harassment against him by the Whites. However, this would not be the case following the evening of June 25, 1945, one year to the day after he confronted them in their driveway, when Denton broke into their home at around 10:30 p.m., while the family were sleeping. Denton once again had a pistol, and proceeded to take the two children, now aged three and one, hostage, before shooting both Edward and Della White twice each. He shot both of them once in each foot. Both survived, but their careers as dancers were over. Denton was deemed not guilty by reason of insanity, and placed in a mental institution, where he ultimately died on May 8, 1962, at the age of sixty-five. It is also worth noting that, Denton’s father, Silas Denton, had fought in the First World War, and had been killed in January of 1918, when Thomas was only three years old. During the time his father was serving in the war, Thomas’s mother and Silas’s wife, Effie Denton, had had an affair with a man named Curtis Garr, who she went on to marry following the death of Silas. Garr had reportedly been terribly abusive toward Thomas, and it is thought that this, coupled with his experiences with Della White, nee Hart, may have left him with a strong hatred toward women. Notably, Minnie King bears a slight, but noticeable resemblance to Della Hart, both having dark brown hair and slight freckles. There were also seemingly no further killings by the alleged Lady of the Lake killer after Denton was arrested and later institutionalized, although it is worth noting that no further victims were discovered after King’s body was found, meaning that the killer must have stopped more than two weeks earlier, although this does not mean they would not have soon resumed killing. Moreover, while Denton was living in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles, just to the west of Echo Park, at the time of the killings, there was nothing definitive linking him to the deaths of either Walker or King.
MATT: So, some fairly good circumstantial evidence, but no proof.
FOGGY: No proof, no.
MATT: There is some compelling evidence here, though.
FOGGY: There is, but I think you’ll find the same is true of most of our other suspects.
MATT: Okay.
FOGGY (resuming narration): Our next suspect is Steven Price, who was twenty-one at the time of the murders, and like Thomas Denton, had recently returned home after being wounded in the war, in his case during battle in Europe in January of that year. Unlike Denton, Price had been shot in the head, suffering brain damage, which many who knew him claimed greatly changed his personality for the worse. Price returned home to Los Angeles in March, and was soon given a job stocking shelves at a Sheldon’s Shoe Store in the Echo Park neighborhood. However, Price’s behavior in the workplace proved troublesome. According to his manager, Theodore Cooper, and several co-workers, Price was frequently late, was often rude and unhelpful to customers, and repeatedly made mistakes in his work. On May 11, 1945, a thirty-seven-year-old customer named Emma Baker tripped and fell while trying on a pair of shoes at the store, landing on the store’s hard tile floor, and broke her arm and three ribs. As it turned out, Price, while shelving the shoes, had mixed up two nearly identical pairs, placing two right-footed shoes together as one pair and two left-foot shoes as another, and that it had been the two right-foot shoes Mrs. Baker was trying on when she fell, which likely caused her to trip. Price was unapologetic, repeatedly stating that Mrs. Baker should have been more careful and denying that he was to blame for the accident. Cooper covered Mrs. Baker’s medical bills and willingly paid compensation to Baker and her family, but he also fired Price. Price reportedly flew into a rage at this and threatened Cooper’s life. He also made repeated threats to Mrs. Baker and her family. When Cooper rehired the young woman who had held his job prior to his hiring, twenty-five-year-old Polly Blackwell, Price began stalking and threatening her as well. Notably, Elizabeth Walker bore a striking resemblance to Emma Baker, which is not surprising, as the two women were actually first cousins, with Baker’s mother being an older sister of Walker’s father, James Young. Additionally, both women were known to enjoy walking along Echo Park Lake in the evening, in fact, Walker was known to do so sometimes in the evening after work. However, it is unclear why Price would have killed Minnie King, as she bore little if any resemblance to Polly Blackwell, the only other woman against whom he is known to have had a grudge. (Displays photographs of both women onscreen, with labels below the photos indicating which woman is which.) Both women did have dark hair, however, King’s, while a dark shade of brown, was, according to those who knew her not dark enough to be mistaken for jet-black, which was the color of Blackwell’s hair. Moreover, King had curly hair from a perm, and hers was nearly halfway down her back, whereas Blackwell’s was straight, and just past shoulder-length. King also wore her hair down, whereas Blackwell preferred to wear hers in what were known as “victory rolls.” King also dressed in fairly fancy clothing, whereas Blackwell generally dressed simply and practically. In short, it is difficult to imagine anyone mistaking one woman for the other. Moreover, there is nothing linking Price to King in any way, and no reason to think that he may have wanted her dead.
MATT: So, it looked like maybe we had our guy – and then no, I guess not. Probably not, anyway.
FOGGY: Yeah, probably not.
MATT: Moving on, then.
FOGGY (resuming narration): Our third suspect is a man named Edgar Vance. Vance was thirty-one at the time of the murders, and unlike Denton and Price, had not served in the war, despite many men his age having done so. While this does not prove he was a bad person, other actions he committed do. Vance was a serial killer who operated in central California from 1950 to 1968, his official victim count including thirty-five women ranging in age from seventeen to roughly thirty-five years of age, as well as six unborn babies. Vance had been living in the Downtown neighborhood of Los Angeles, an area directly southeast of Echo Park, at the time of the Lady in the Lake killings. He had been arrested on a sexual assault charge on June 19, 1945, and ultimately been sentenced to five years in prison in August of that same year, and was released in August of 1950. Not long afterward, he moved to Fresno, and soon after began a killing spree that lasted for eighteen years, as he moved around from town to town, never continuing to live in the same city for longer than twenty months at a time, and committing most of his murders in and around neighboring cities to the ones he lived in at the time. Vance often stole his victims’ shoes, leading to his being nicknamed the Footwear Killer. He also sometimes dumped his victims’ bodies in rivers or lakes. He was finally caught and arrested in October of 1968. Ultimately, he was sentenced to death in April of 1970, but this was commuted to life in prison in February of 1972, when California abolished the death penalty. Vance ultimately died in San Quentin State Prison in May 1975, at the age of sixty-five. To this day, many consider him the likeliest suspect in the Lady in the Lake murders.
MATT: Yeah, I feel like this guy’s probably our strongest suspect. So far, anyway.
FOGGY: Yeah, I’d tend to agree with you there.
MATT: Are there anymore suspects?
FOGGY: There are, but there’s only one more we’re going to get into today. And I gotta tell you, I don’t think he did it.
MATT: Okay.
FOGGY: I won’t – I won’t rule out his involvement 100%, but I don’t think he did it.
MATT: Okay, let’s hear it.
FOGGY: Our fourth and final theory is that the lead investigator on the case, Detective Inspector Andrew Henry, was in some way involved in the murders to begin with. Beliefs about his level of involvement vary. Some believe that, as in the case of the death of Jane Scott, whose death, if you’ll recall, Henry helped to cover up for industrialist and politician Calvin Chadwick and his wife, actress Whitney Frost, he simply helped cover up the identity of the true perpetrator, though who the guilty party was in this scenario also varies, with some suggesting any of the three suspects mentioned above, though as Henry had no known connection to any of them, and none held any kind of political power or large amount of wealth, this seems unlikely. Others suggest that Chadwick was in some way responsible for the deaths. However, Chadwick and Frost had in fact been living in Hollywood at the time the murders took place, and there was nothing linking Chadwick, Frost, or any of Chadwick’s business holdings to either Elizabeth Walker or Minnie King. Others have suggested that Henry covered up the killings for one or more other powerful figure in Los Angeles, possibly even deliberately staging two completely unrelated deaths to look like the work of the same killer. Following Henry’s death, it would come out that the case of Jane Scott was not the first time he had accepted bribes to cover up a crime. Some have posited that he may have staged the so-called “Lady in the Lake” killings to make himself look better, or bring more funding to his department. However, this raises the question of why he waited another two years to stage another death to look like the work of the same killer, despite having had many opportunities to do so. On June 26, 1945, the same month the Lady in the Lake killings occurred, twenty-two-year-old Thomas Gordon, son of wealthy businessman Terrence Gordon, was driving drunk and crashed his car, killing his date for the evening, twenty-year-old Pauline Phillips. The elder Mr. Gordon contacted Detective Henry, who quietly had the incident declared an accident and quickly closed the case. While it would have been difficult to argue that the sorts of injuries caused by a car crash could have resulted from stabbing or drowning, it may still have been possible to place her body in the lake and argue that any broken bones resulted from a fall and any head injuries from Phillips hitting her head post-mortem. Two months after this, on August 17, 1945, twenty-one-year-old Audrey Wilkinson, a maid to the powerful Simpson political family, stabbed herself to death after reportedly being repeatedly blackmailed by their twenty-four-year-old son, Roger, into sleeping with him in exchange for not losing her job. Horrifyingly, Detective Henry accepted a bribe of around $500, which is worth roughly $8,000 in today’s money, to not dig into the case, and simply ruled it a suicide due to temporary insanity with little to no investigation. In June of 1946, a year after the Lady in the Lake killings occurred, twenty-one-year-old Madeleine Hanlon was accidentally drowned in the pool of the Trentons, another wealthy L.A. business family, during a night of wild drinking and partying with their son, Steven. While there was little reason to suspect fowl play here, as numerous witnesses were present to testify to the accidental nature of Hanlon’s death, Detective Henry still accepted money from the family in order to have her body dumped in a pond several miles away, so that it was later “discovered” accidentally, preventing any direct connection being made between her death and the Trenton family, and instructing any witnesses to keep quiet about the true time and place of her demise, as it would, in Henry’s words, quote, “only cause trouble”, end quote. Finally, there was the case of Lilian Keyes, who, following Henry’s death and the truth of his corruption being made public, came forward with a story claiming that, on the evening of July 4, 1946, she had been attacked by then-thirty-six-year-old movie star Roger Burton, who had repeatedly stabbed her and attempted to rape her on her way home from a Fourth of July celebration. Police records indeed showed that Miss Keyes had in fact been found passed out in an alley that evening, unconscious. The case had been fairly well-publicized at the time, however, Keyes had claimed that she did not recognize her attacker. After Henry’s death and the reveal of his corruption, however, she claimed that Henry had refused to believe her allegations against Burton and told her that he would arrest her if she attempted to press charges against him. Other officers backed up her claim, saying that Henry had ordered them to keep quiet about her case, as well as other cases, including those mentioned above.
MATT: Holy shit, this guy’s dirty.
FOGGY: Yeah, no kidding. What makes matters worse is that, when Peggy Carter confronted him about covering up Jane Scott’s death, according to Carter, he insisted he was the good guy, because he was trying to get the Lady in the Lake investigation reopened, so they could keep investigating the murder.
MATT: I see. So, he wanted to keep investigating that case, but he was willing to let all these others slide, because it could make high-profile people look bad.
FOGGY: Exactly.
MATT: And he probably only wanted to keep the Lady in the Lake case reopened because it was so publicly well-known, and not being able to solve it made him look bad.
FOGGY: I’d say that’s about the size of it.
MATT: Holy shit, that’s messed up.
FOGGY (resuming narration): Despite any of these cases being potential opportunities for him to try to frame them as Lady in the Lake killings, or an attempted killing in the case of Lilian Keyes, Detective Henry failed to do so. He only attempted to falsify another slaying by the supposed killer when it looked as if his funding for the investigation was being pulled, indicating that the killings were real to begin with, and that Henry’s attempt to get more resources dedicated to the case were a genuine attempt to be able to solve it, albeit motivated by a desire to save his own reputation, rather than a genuine desire for justice. Ironically, however, the sheer oddity of the case he chose to use in his efforts eclipsed the comparatively ordinary murders of Elizabeth Walker and Minnie King, causing them to be largely forgotten. Rather they were killed by an angry jilted lover, a disgruntled former shoe store employee, a then-budding serial killer, or another individual entirely remains… Unsolved.
THE END