"The Kidnapping": Chapter XI of The Barbara Graham Story

"Mug shot of Emmett Perkins, a safe cracker and key suspect in the Monohan murder case. He was named as the kidnapper on April 14, 1953. Mug shot was taken by the Los Angeles Police Department's City Jail."

The Kidnapping

The first thing that Los Angeles county district attorney Ernest Roll did after the story broke was contact Baxter Shorter's attorney and offer to take the informant into protective custody. When advised of the offer, the streetwise Shorter turned it down flat.

"I'd be in more danger in custody than if I was out and able to take care of myself," he said. He remained at large.

The following evening, Shorter and his wife, Olivia, were watching television in the living room of their small apartment in the Lancaster Residential Hotel at 121 N. Flower Street in downtown Los Angeles. The doorbell rang and Shorter went to answer it. Lifting a blind on a small window on the door, he saw a man he knew and opened the door. The man immediately pulled a gun on him.

"Let's go, Baxter," he said coldly.

Olivia left her chair and rushed to her husband's side, but Baxter pushed her back from the doorway, away from the gun. "It's okay," he told her tensely. To the gunman he said, "I'll go with you." He walked out.

Olivia, who had been a part of her husband's criminal life for a number of years, rushed to the kitchen and snatched a loaded rifle from its hiding place. Hurrying through another door, she intercepted the two men in the hallway. The gunman heard her cock the rifle. He put his pistol against Baxter's ear and warned, "Get back inside or Baxter dies right here!"

"Go on, honey," Shorter told his wife.

Olivia obeyed. She got to the front window in time to see the gunman move Baxter out to the curb, where what she believed was a late-model Dodge or Plymouth pulled up, picked up the two men, and sped away.

Frantic, Olivia called the 116 police emergency line and reported that her husband had just been kidnapped at gunpoint. Within minutes, officers were at the scene and Olivia told them that her husband had just that morning confessed to her that he had been at the scene of the Monohan murder. He had, she said, cried like a baby at the relief of getting it off his chest. Olivia also knew that he had already talked with the police.

Within an hour, all of the investigators on the Monohan case were alerted about the kidnapping. Olivia, brought to headquarters, unhesitatingly picked out a mug shot of Emmett Perkins as the man who had kidnapped Baxter.

Detective Dick Ruble quickly took half a dozen men out to the El Monte house where Perkins conducted his illegal gambling, and where Barbara Graham had been living with him since leaving her husband and son. But Ruble was too late. Perkins and Graham had moved out that afternoon. Along with Jack Santo, their whereabouts were now also unknown.