Bloody Murder in Burbank
On the morning of Wednesday, March 11, 1953, Mitchell Truesdale parked his gardening truck in front of Mrs. Mabel Monohan's neat, well-tended home on the corner of Parkside and Orchard, in a pleasant, tree-lined residential area of Burbank, 12 miles north of Los Angeles. Taking his equipment from the bed of the truck, he proceeded to mow and edge the front and side lawns. When he finished, he went to the front door and rang the doorbell to get the key to the driveway gate so he could do the backyard.
When Truesdale got to the front door, he found it open, just barely, less than an inch. But that was enough to cause him to be taken aback. Mabel Monohan, a 62-year-old widow who lived alone, never left a door, window, or gate unlocked, much less open. She was obsessively safety-conscious; the gardener had to lock the driveway gate even when he was in the backyard.
Truesdale rang the bell several times without getting a response. Then he opened the door far enough to yell inside, "Mrs. Monohan, it's Truesdale, the gardener! Can I have the key to the back gate, please'"
When there was still no answer, he pushed the door open a little farther. What he saw inside stunned and frightened him. The house looked like a cyclone had gone through it: furniture was turned open, carpets had been peeled back, drawers pulled out and emptied onto the floor. And everywhere -- on walls, floor, furniture, rugs -- there were bloodstains. And a trail of blood led down a nearby hallway.
Mitchell Truesdale backed out of the front door and ran to call the police.
Crime Scene
The body of Mabel Monohan was half in and half out of a closet that the trail of blood led to. Her hands were tied behind her with a strip of bed sheet. A pillowcase was over her head, tied very tightly around the neck with another strip of bed sheet. When the pillowcase was removed, police saw that the frail widow had been beaten viciously about the face and head with a blunt instrument.
"Pistol-whipped, sure as hell," said one veteran detective, who had seen such handiwork before.
The entire house had been ransacked, top to bottom; even a furnace vent in the floor had been torn out. The trail of blood continued throughout the house, as if the victim had been manhandled from room to room, being beaten along the way with increasing fury when the intruder failed to find what he was looking for. Despite this activity, the crime lab would not find a single fingerprint or other physical evidence.
Surprisingly, in a bedroom closet where numerous purses and pieces of luggage had been opened and cast aside, detectives found a shabby old black purse, hanging from a hook that had not been touched. In it was $475 in cash and an estimated $10,000 in miscellaneous jewelry.
Preliminary investigation revealed that the victim's daughter, Iris, had once been married to a Las Vegas gambler named Luther Scherer, and that the Scherers had once occupied the house. When Iris and the gambler divorced, Iris got the house as part of her settlement. Iris later remarried, a wealthy importer named Robert Sowder, and gave the house to her widowed mother when the Sowders went to live in New York.
Investigators also learned that Mabel Monohan and her former son-in-law maintained a close, affectionate relationship that continued even after Iris and Luther divorced. Scherer still had a closet full of suits and personal effects in the house that he used when visiting the area. And once, when Scherer was seriously ill with cirrhosis of the liver, he came home to Mabel and she nursed him back to health, cooking and caring for him so he would not have to hire a stranger.
There were rumors among numerous people that the police interviewed that Luther Scherer even had a safe somewhere in the house, and was believed to leave large amounts of cash there with Mabel for safekeeping.
No comments:
Post a Comment