Speaker 1: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 1: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 1: written about them. Geesy Bundy Dahmer The Nightstalker VTK every
Speaker 1: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 1: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 1: journalist and author Dan Zufanski. Good Evening.
Speaker 2: In this dramatic true account about the power of sensationalized crime,
Speaker 2: one woman's case is exposed for its sexism, flagrant disregard
Speaker 2: for the truth, and ultimately the dangers posed by an
Speaker 2: unbridled prosecution. Unwanted and thected from birth, Barbara Graham had
Speaker 2: to overcome the odds just to survive. Her beauty was
Speaker 2: both a blessing and a curse, offering her too many
Speaker 2: options of all the wrong kind. Her innate sensitivity left
Speaker 2: her vulnerable to the harsh realities of the street, where
Speaker 2: she was left to fend for herself before she reached
Speaker 2: double digits. Her record of petty crime spoke to a
Speaker 2: life that constantly teetered on the brink of disaster. But
Speaker 2: in nineteen fifty three, a catastrophic twist of fate would
Speaker 2: catapult out of obscurity and into the headlines. When a
Speaker 2: robbery spiraled out of control and escalated into a brutal murder,
Speaker 2: Barbara became the centerpiece of a media circus. Her beauty
Speaker 2: enraptured the press, and they were quick to portray her
Speaker 2: as a villainous femme fete, despite abundant evidence to the contrary,
Speaker 2: a fiction. The prosecution eagerly promoted the frenzy of public
Speaker 2: interest and wilful distortion paved a treacherous path for Barbara Graham.
Speaker 2: In Trial by Ambush, author and criminal lawyer Marcia Clark
Speaker 2: investigates the case, exposing the fallacies in the demonizing picture
Speaker 2: they painted and the critical evidence that was never revealed.
Speaker 2: The book that we're featuring this evening is Trial by Ambush,
Speaker 2: Murder Injustice and the Truth about the Case of Barbara Graham,
Speaker 2: with my special guest, criminal lawyer O. J. Simpson, prosecutor
Speaker 2: and New York Times bestselling author Marcia Clark. Welcome to
Speaker 2: the program, and thank you very much for this interview.
Speaker 2: Marcia Clark, Thank.
Speaker 3: You so much. Dan. It's a pleasure to be here
Speaker 3: with you.
Speaker 2: It's a pleasure to be able to speak to you
Speaker 2: and congratulations on this new book, Trial by Ambush.
Speaker 3: Delighted to be able to talk to you about it.
Speaker 2: You are a New York Times bestselling novelist, among being
Speaker 2: a former prosecutor and defense attorney. But tell us about
Speaker 2: your decision to write about Barbara Graham. You write that
Speaker 2: you have a vivid memory of the minute you knew
Speaker 2: that you were going to write about Barbara Graham. Tell
Speaker 2: us what it was that finally convinced you.
Speaker 3: You know, it was a slow rolling process, Dan, It
Speaker 3: was not one of those Eureka moments. You know that
Speaker 3: I saw the case and I said, oh, this is it.
Speaker 3: I did not know that I had been researching another
Speaker 3: case all entirely. And it was a footnote at the
Speaker 3: bottom of the page that mentioned Barbara Graham's case. And
Speaker 3: I looked at that, and then I saw that it
Speaker 3: had been a very famous case. It was its own
Speaker 3: trial of the century back in nineteen fifty three. Nationwide coverage.
Speaker 3: They were covering it NonStop, feverishly, especially in California and
Speaker 3: Los Angeles, like morning, afternoon and evening newspapers. And I thought,
Speaker 3: oh boy, I don't know. I don't want to tread
Speaker 3: on ground that's already well trodden. And then I saw
Speaker 3: that it had been the subject of an Oscar winning
Speaker 3: film called I Want to Live, featuring Barbara Graham, who
Speaker 3: was one of the defendants and won an Oscar actually
Speaker 3: for Best Actress for Susan Hayward. And then I was
Speaker 3: really convinced this was never going to work, but I
Speaker 3: was intrigued nonetheless, and so I decided to look into
Speaker 3: it and see what had been written. And it turned
Speaker 3: out that actually, other than newspaper clippings, it had been
Speaker 3: very little written about. One book, a very slim volume
Speaker 3: published by one of the reporters who covered the case
Speaker 3: for the Herald examer which was not your most reliable
Speaker 3: outlet at the time, and he covered it. He wrote
Speaker 3: the book in collaboration with the prosecution. So I thought, okay,
Speaker 3: And then I read the book, very short book, and
Speaker 3: it was it was filled with things that made me go,
Speaker 3: what that can't be right. This can't be right. That
Speaker 3: can't be right. I thought, okay, so this is not
Speaker 3: going to be the definitive work on this, And then
Speaker 3: I saw that it had also been written about, in
Speaker 3: some measure by Kathleen Karen, who wrote a fantastic book
Speaker 3: called Proof of Guilt, which focuses on the death penalty,
Speaker 3: and she mentioned Barbara's case among others. Excellent book. I
Speaker 3: recommend it, but it did not go into the trial,
Speaker 3: which is what I wanted to do, because what you
Speaker 3: have here was a really heinous, brutal murder of a
Speaker 3: totally innocent victim. Mabel Monahan, who was in her sixties
Speaker 3: and infirm, lived a quiet life in a suburban little
Speaker 3: house in Burbank. There was no reason for her to
Speaker 3: be bludgeoned and strangled to death by these defendants. But
Speaker 3: the defendants that were involved in this case along with Barbara,
Speaker 3: looked nothing like her. They looked like the thugs they were.
Speaker 3: You can imagine them doing just a anything. Barbara, on
Speaker 3: the other hand, she had a misdemeanor rap sheet that
Speaker 3: was nothing, that was marijuana possession, check kiding, maybe prostitution
Speaker 3: here and there, really way out of her lead to
Speaker 3: be involved in something like this. So I knew that
Speaker 3: I had to find out what really happened, How did
Speaker 3: she get convicted and how did she get put to death?
Speaker 3: And so that required, of course that I look into
Speaker 3: not only the investigation of the case, but the testimony
Speaker 3: at trial that put her in the gas chamber. And
Speaker 3: so that was I think. And then it was the
Speaker 3: final final grace note and coupdi gras in terms of
Speaker 3: my decision to do it was the photograph I saw.
Speaker 3: It was her sitting with her lawyer in her prison dress.
Speaker 3: She was by the way, I should not say by
Speaker 3: the way, because the newspapers made a big deal. She
Speaker 3: was beautiful. She did not look like a murderer in
Speaker 3: any way, shape or form. In fact, some of the
Speaker 3: newspapers said that she looked more like a showgirl than
Speaker 3: a defender. She was beautiful, and she was sitting at
Speaker 3: this little table with a horde of reporters, all men like,
Speaker 3: hovering over her. The degree to which she was just
Speaker 3: kind of at the center of this intense energy, all
Speaker 3: focused deeply on her was really very compelling. And she's
Speaker 3: looking over her shoulder in a way that looks a
Speaker 3: little frightened, a little intimidated. There is no sign of
Speaker 3: the ultimate of the murderous, the stone cold, bloody Babs
Speaker 3: as they called her that the press had been touting
Speaker 3: throughout the trial. And I thought, Okay, this is really
Speaker 3: something's wrong here. I have to look into this and
Speaker 3: that was the final moment.
Speaker 2: You say that at first it was a circuitous route
Speaker 2: to get this reporter's transcript, because at first you got
Speaker 2: the clerk's transcript. So this author, Kathleen Cairn's actually helped
Speaker 2: you locate that reporter's transcript, which was, you say, essential
Speaker 2: to be able to write this book. Right.
Speaker 3: She recommended that I check out the state archives. Now,
Speaker 3: even so, I wasn't sure that reporters would be keeping
Speaker 3: the court reporters would keep the transcript for as long
Speaker 3: as this This is over seventy years ago, and so
Speaker 3: I had reached out to this court reporter's website with
Speaker 3: an email saying, do you guys still how long do
Speaker 3: you keep these notes and how long do you keep
Speaker 3: transcripts for? Because in the average case, I know handling
Speaker 3: appeals as I do in California that in the typical
Speaker 3: felony they don't keep their notes longer than ten years.
Speaker 3: So I got no answer to the email, and I thought, well,
Speaker 3: these guys are too busy to deal with me. So
Speaker 3: I called the number and got extremely lucky that a
Speaker 3: court reporter actually picked up the phone, and I said,
Speaker 3: is there any chance that you would keep the transcripts
Speaker 3: and the notes from a case this old. And she
Speaker 3: said said, well or nearly no, Well what was the
Speaker 3: sentence And I said it was the death sentence. Oh,
Speaker 3: she goes, Oh, we keep those forever, There'll be somewhere.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: So I had hope. And then I went to the archives,
Speaker 3: and the archives took a while to say, we don't
Speaker 3: know what we have. We might have it, we might not.
Speaker 3: And I had my researcher, John Valeri, who was amazing,
Speaker 3: keep after them and keep in communication, and they kept
Speaker 3: saying they were having their legal team review it and
Speaker 3: vet it. And I thought, wait, if they have transcripts
Speaker 3: of the trial that's public record, anyone can get that.
Speaker 3: There's nothing to vet. So I was worried that what
Speaker 3: they might actually have would not be the transcripts. So
Speaker 3: when they finally said they're on their way. What we've got,
Speaker 3: you've got now, I wasn't sure I was going to
Speaker 3: get what I needed. So it was like a moment
Speaker 3: of heart pounding when I saw when the boxes were
Speaker 3: dropped on my doorstep and I opened up the first
Speaker 3: one and I almost didn't want to look. I opened
Speaker 3: it up and then I saw the front page. It
Speaker 3: said volume one reporters transcript, and I was like, yes,
Speaker 3: this is but then I saw it was over four
Speaker 3: thousand pages. So this was the heaven and the hell
Speaker 3: of it all. Here you go. And so that's why
Speaker 3: it took the better part of two years to write
Speaker 3: this book.
Speaker 2: Wow, now you tell the story of Barbara Graham on
Speaker 2: the evening of March eighth, nineteen fifty three in Burbank, California.
Speaker 2: But where you take us to the home of Mabel Monahan,
Speaker 2: the widow who lived alone, and she was ready to
Speaker 2: go to her regular Sunday night poker game where her
Speaker 2: close friend Merle Leslie tell us a little bit about
Speaker 2: Mabel and that night before March ninth, nineteen fifty three.
Speaker 3: So Mabel was a really cool person. She was trippy,
Speaker 3: She was a member of a vaudeville troop. She was
Speaker 3: a renowned roller skater, and say she toured the country,
Speaker 3: spent all of her adult life doing that and performing.
Speaker 3: And at one point she was even she palmed herself
Speaker 3: off as a palm reader and called herself Madame Martinez,
Speaker 3: which was at that time considered an exotic name. And
Speaker 3: she met her husband, who was a world class ice
Speaker 3: skater and roller skating performer. They became a duo and
Speaker 3: they performed together and ultimately married. And there's this picture
Speaker 3: of them skating where he's holding her by a rope
Speaker 3: in his mouth that she's holding in her mouth and
Speaker 3: she's spinning around in the air with him spinning in circles,
Speaker 3: an amazing feat. So she was really quite something. So
Speaker 3: how does she wind up in Burbank? That was purely happenstance.
Speaker 3: Her daughter, Iris, who was also a performer, wound up
Speaker 3: marrying a casino owner and real estate entrepreneur named Tutor Scherer.
Speaker 3: And he was a trip in himself. He had been
Speaker 3: heavily invested in his speakeasy in this restaurant that was
Speaker 3: basically a refurbished ship off the pier of Santa Monica
Speaker 3: called Ships, and I had audition to perform his in
Speaker 3: a stage show there, and in hiring her, they got
Speaker 3: to be close and then they wound up getting married.
Speaker 3: But he was somebody who didn't necessarily believe in monogamy.
Speaker 3: They had thirteen years of a rocky marriage and ultimately
Speaker 3: Iris divorced him. He was a very wealthy man and
Speaker 3: he was very generous with Iris when he divorced her.
Speaker 3: When she divorced him, that is, she didn't. He gave
Speaker 3: her the house in Burbank, as well as jewels and money.
Speaker 3: She didn't want the house. She wanted to remarry and
Speaker 3: move to New York, which she did, so she gave
Speaker 3: the house to her mother, Mabel Monahan. Now Mabel had
Speaker 3: never lived in a house before, so she was very
Speaker 3: security conscious because she'd always lived in hotels. Hotels had
Speaker 3: front desks, they had men between you and whoever was
Speaker 3: going to come to see you. So she was not
Speaker 3: accustomed to living on her own and that made her nervous,
Speaker 3: so she would keep her doors and windows locked and
Speaker 3: gates locked. This was not somebody who was likely to
Speaker 3: open the door for anyone. So although Irish divorced Tutor Sharer,
Speaker 3: Mabel Monahan was very close with him. They were very tight.
Speaker 3: She loved him, he loved her, and he would come
Speaker 3: to visit her whenever he came to Los Angeles. He
Speaker 3: had since although he had been heavy into his speakeasy
Speaker 3: and even tried to get into the gambling scene in
Speaker 3: Los Angeles, it soon became apparent he couldn't stay here
Speaker 3: because Mickey Cohen owned all the gambling business, and Mickey
Speaker 3: Cohen didn't like competition. So Tudor Scherer, who liked to
Speaker 3: keep his who liked to stay breathing, decided he would
Speaker 3: move to Las Vegas and there he invested in casinos
Speaker 3: et cetera, made a lot of money, did extremely well.
Speaker 3: He would come out to visit occasionally for various interest
Speaker 3: real estate interests here, and he would come and stay
Speaker 3: with Mabel Monahan. This led the community of bad guys,
Speaker 3: safecrackers and burglars to start a rumor that Tutor Sharer
Speaker 3: came out to visit Mabel Monahan because he was stashing
Speaker 3: money in her house. And this big rumor started to
Speaker 3: flingvoing around that there was a safe in her house
Speaker 3: with hundreds of thousands of dollars, and two years before
Speaker 3: the murder, there was an effort to actually case the
Speaker 3: house to see whether it was possible to get in
Speaker 3: and steal the money and break into the safe. Nothing
Speaker 3: came of it. It never happened. So flashed forward to
Speaker 3: March eighth. The evening of March eighth, Mabel Monahan went
Speaker 3: with her friends to her regular poker game. It was
Speaker 3: a poker party actually in Studio City, after which they
Speaker 3: went to what they called dinner, which was at four
Speaker 3: in the morning, and then they went home, and it
Speaker 3: was on that day she went to sleep. Mabel her
Speaker 3: friend ultimately left that afternoon, and by the evening, Mabel
Speaker 3: was sitting and reading a murder mystery called The Purple Pony,
Speaker 3: when there was a knock on the door. Now, unbeknownst
Speaker 3: to Mabel, the plot had been hatched to burglarize the house.
Speaker 3: But knowing that she would never open the door to someone,
Speaker 3: to a man or someone she didn't know, they had
Speaker 3: to find someone who would act as the lure, whom
Speaker 3: Mabel would be more likely to trust, and that was
Speaker 3: Barbara Graham Petit very sweet looking, certainly didn't look like
Speaker 3: a criminal. Barbara went to the door and knocked on
Speaker 3: the door and said, could you please help me? My
Speaker 3: car broke down in the middle of the street. I
Speaker 3: don't know what to do. I have to get to
Speaker 3: a phone. Can I please use your phone to call
Speaker 3: for help. Mabel made her one fatal mistake and let
Speaker 3: Barbara in, and then the men came in behind her.
Speaker 1: You say that.
Speaker 2: Two days later, March eleventh, nineteen fifty three, her gardener
Speaker 2: at about eleven thirty came by Mitchell Shreuesdale and he
Speaker 2: thought it was unusual because the floodlights were still on
Speaker 2: and then the front door was ajar, So tell us
Speaker 2: what he discovers, then what happens following.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so this was completely out of character for Mabel.
Speaker 3: I mean, not only did she never leave her front
Speaker 3: door unopened, she never left it unlocked. Not only that,
Speaker 3: but the gate to the backyard was also I think
Speaker 3: unlocked as well. But just the front door being open
Speaker 3: was really shocked him. He pushed it a little further
Speaker 3: open and looked inside and immediately saw blood on the walls.
Speaker 3: Could see right through It's not a big house. You
Speaker 3: could see right through to the living room and all
Speaker 3: the furniture had been upended, the carpeting and the rugs
Speaker 3: had been torn up. The house had been turned upside down,
Speaker 3: and there was more blood toward the going toward the
Speaker 3: living room. He backed out, freaked out, called his friend,
Speaker 3: who was a police officer in Burbank Police Department, and
Speaker 3: he happened to be off duty at the time. He
Speaker 3: showed up. He walked through the house and saw Mabel
Speaker 3: Monahan lying in a hallway with a garage around her
Speaker 3: neck and her head bloodied, and then he called in
Speaker 3: the regy, Lieutenant Robert Coveney.
Speaker 2: You're right right away that of course suspect some form
Speaker 2: of robbery. But then they go into this closet and
Speaker 2: what did they discover that was crazy.
Speaker 3: So it looks like it's for all intents and purposes,
Speaker 3: the way the house has been ransacked looks like it
Speaker 3: must have been an intended burglary, robbery, et cetera. But
Speaker 3: they they don't find a safe, they don't find anything wrong,
Speaker 3: and then they go to mal Mabel's mon Han's. They
Speaker 3: go to Mabel Monahan's closet and they see all these
Speaker 3: purses that she had, and they go through all and
Speaker 3: it's clear that they went through all the purses. They
Speaker 3: dumped them out, throw them on the floor. But there's
Speaker 3: a purse left hanging on a hook in the closet
Speaker 3: that they didn't touch, and that was the purse that
Speaker 3: Mabel Monahanue had used the night before, which happened to
Speaker 3: contain all kinds of expensive jewelry as well as hundreds
Speaker 3: of dollars in cash. Because Mabel liked to flashed her
Speaker 3: jewelry to all her buddies whenever she went out, and
Speaker 3: she carried it with her frequently. That purse happened to
Speaker 3: be left untouched there. Plus, okay, so that's a mystery.
Speaker 3: What happened here? And why did they leave that? Why
Speaker 3: were they there? Plus they had no physical evidence. They
Speaker 3: never found fingerprints, They never found really any shoeprints that
Speaker 3: went to anything. All they knew that there was blood
Speaker 3: on the walls, blood on the floor, and Mabel Monahan
Speaker 3: lying dead, bludgeoned and garroted.
Speaker 2: Now police don't have any leads, They don't have any
Speaker 2: physical evidence, as you're right, So who do they go
Speaker 2: to initially to see if they can find any information?
Speaker 3: So the police fan out all over the place. They
Speaker 3: asked neighbors if they saw or heard anything. No one did.
Speaker 3: Remember this is nineteen fifty three. There's no close circuit cameras,
Speaker 3: there's no citywide cameras, there's no ring cameras, and there's
Speaker 3: no necessarily of course, there's not DNA. There's a lot
Speaker 3: they didn't have. No one heard anything, no one saw anything.
Speaker 3: So they had to fan out to their known informants
Speaker 3: and bad guys who lived or worked the area. It
Speaker 3: took a while, and for a couple of weeks there
Speaker 3: were no leeds whatsoever. Because this was such an innocent
Speaker 3: victim and in such a quiet, very peaceful neighborhood that
Speaker 3: never had any crime in it. There was a real
Speaker 3: public outcry about what had happened and a lot of
Speaker 3: pressure on the police to solve this one. So they
Speaker 3: reached out to the typical suspects who might know something
Speaker 3: about the criminal community, the typical burglars and boxmen as
Speaker 3: they called men. The boxman is their slang for a
Speaker 3: safe cracker. And they eventually came up with someone who
Speaker 3: was called Indian George, and he told, you know, I
Speaker 3: remember people talking about wanting to ransack this house because
Speaker 3: we believed that it had a safe with lots of
Speaker 3: money in it. He gave up some names, and all
Speaker 3: of the names he gave up were former employees of
Speaker 3: Mickey Cohen the Gangster. A couple of them panned out.
Speaker 3: One of them first was William Upshaw. He was known
Speaker 3: to have worked for Mickey Cohen. He began to talk
Speaker 3: and he gave them the name of Baxter Shorter, another
Speaker 3: former cohort of Mickey Cohen and Baxter Shorter was known
Speaker 3: to be a boxman too. Baxter Shorter was indeed turned
Speaker 3: out to be was indeed involved in the burglary and murder.
Speaker 3: Though he was peripheral, he was the one who actually
Speaker 3: knew where Mabel Monahan lived. He was the one hired
Speaker 3: to be the lookout, but also to show them where
Speaker 3: to go, and he would remain The plan was he'd
Speaker 3: remain outside as the lookout. He'd get ten percent of
Speaker 3: the take.
Speaker 2: That Jesus has an opportunity to stop to hear these messages.
Speaker 2: Now you talk about right away, Shorter gets a lawyer,
Speaker 2: and what does the lawyer want for his client.
Speaker 3: So the lawyer of Baxter Shorter, before he talked, reach
Speaker 3: out to a lawyer whom his buddy, William Upshaw happened
Speaker 3: to have used for his situation because he wanted immunity
Speaker 3: as well. He got that lawyer. The lawyer immediately saw
Speaker 3: the value of his testimony, of his statement, because the
Speaker 3: police had nothing, no leads, they had no case, and
Speaker 3: they said, I want complete immunity for Baxter Shorter. If
Speaker 3: he's going to give you this statement, he will give
Speaker 3: you all the information he has and he will absolutely
Speaker 3: be able to identify the other perpetrators involved, but he
Speaker 3: wants to be able to walk. The cops, having no choice,
Speaker 3: said yes, you know, done, done deal, come in and
Speaker 3: talk to us. So he gave a statement, an official
Speaker 3: statement under oath in the DA's office, in which which
Speaker 3: was memorialized by a stenographer. So you had a court
Speaker 3: reporter there taking down his statement word for word, which
Speaker 3: is in the book word for word. And he tells
Speaker 3: the story of these three let me see Jack Santo's
Speaker 3: Emmett Perkins, John True as I call him, the ironically
Speaker 3: named John True, and Barbara Graham. He did not know
Speaker 3: Barbara Graham's name. He just knew it was a woman
Speaker 3: was involved. He thought her name was Mary. And he
Speaker 3: told of how they said to him, we hear there's
Speaker 3: all this money in a safe at the Nabel Wanahan house.
Speaker 3: You're a box man, you know where she lives. You
Speaker 3: can tell us, you can help us with this plan
Speaker 3: and you'll get a part of the take. Baxter didn't
Speaker 3: really want to be part of the burglary itself. He
Speaker 3: was very gun shy about it. He had in fact
Speaker 3: been one of the people who cased the house before,
Speaker 3: and he was nervous that if this burglary went through,
Speaker 3: the cops would go straight to him, because he believed
Speaker 3: that the cops had arrested him previously for chasing the house.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: He was wrong. He had never been arrested for that,
Speaker 3: but that's what he thought. So he decided, he said,
Speaker 3: you know, I'll help you out, but I won't ask
Speaker 3: for as much as the take. I'll just be a
Speaker 3: look out ten percent. So he named them, and he said,
Speaker 3: he told exactly what happened. He said, you know, they
Speaker 3: went to the house. Barbara got her to open the door,
Speaker 3: true John True went in right after her, like right afterwards.
Speaker 3: And then it took a long time. Something was going wrong.
Speaker 3: They should have subdued Mabel much quicker than they did.
Speaker 3: And for a long time there was no sound, no
Speaker 3: sight of anybody giving them the go ahead as they
Speaker 3: were waiting outside. And ultimately EMMITTT. Perkins decides to go
Speaker 3: inside and finds that Mabel Monahan is on the floor,
Speaker 3: beaten and struggling for breath. And then Jack Santos went
Speaker 3: inside and after a few minutes, I think during those
Speaker 3: few minutes they were ransacking the house. Baxter Shorter, Jack
Speaker 3: Santos goes outside, waves to Baxter Shorter to say, there's
Speaker 3: nothing here. We just want you to see come inside
Speaker 3: and see there's nothing here to justify the fact that
Speaker 3: he wasn't going to get any proceeds from the burglary,
Speaker 3: and Baxter Shorter then saw the whole bloody scene and
Speaker 3: the way in which the house had been torn up,
Speaker 3: and describes the behavior of everyone in the house, including
Speaker 3: John True.
Speaker 2: God True, it was the person that said that Tudor
Speaker 2: Scherer had this money, and he had traveled with him
Speaker 2: with this big box of money. So he is the
Speaker 2: guy that incentivizes these other people with this story, doesn't he? Yes?
Speaker 3: In part? I think also, I think actually this was
Speaker 3: such common knowledge among the burglars in the area that
Speaker 3: others knew about it, and they knew it earlier, as
Speaker 3: I said back in like fifty one, I think. But
Speaker 3: it's but John True insisted that he was the one
Speaker 3: who knew and told everybody that he had ridden from
Speaker 3: Las Vegas to Los Angeles with Tutor Share and that
Speaker 3: he saw him holding a cardboard box that was filled
Speaker 3: with money, and Tutor Sharer told him that he did,
Speaker 3: and so he could assure everyone I know there's money
Speaker 3: in that house because I saw him coming to Los
Speaker 3: Angeles with that box. So he was the one who
Speaker 3: actually provided the motive for it, according to him. I
Speaker 3: really do think Upshob probably co that, and so did
Speaker 3: Baxter Shorter. But for sure, John True insisted that he
Speaker 3: knew and he was involved, and he actually represented that
Speaker 3: he was very tight with Tutor Sharer. They were good friends,
Speaker 3: and he went to his wedding. That turned out to
Speaker 3: be just one of many lies told by John True,
Speaker 3: who actually was the one who turned state's evidence and
Speaker 3: helped the prosecution make the case that they could never
Speaker 3: have made without him.
Speaker 2: Well, let's talk about Baxter Shorter was a prosecution dream
Speaker 2: in terms of this previously, with no leads and no
Speaker 2: physical evidence, So what do they do? What do they advise?
Speaker 2: And how does the press handle this information?
Speaker 3: So Baxter Shorter was the dream come true. Finally he
Speaker 3: kicked open the door they could identify suspects. One thing
Speaker 3: led to another and they figured out who the woman was.
Speaker 3: That because she had been a girlfriend so to speak,
Speaker 3: of Emmett Perkins and a known associate of his. She
Speaker 3: had been his dice girl for his gambling house. In
Speaker 3: El Monte. So ultimately what Baxter Shorter gave them was
Speaker 3: literally everything in terms of information. Now, Baxter Shorter did
Speaker 3: not witness the initial confrontation with Mabel Monahan because he EMMITTT.
Speaker 3: Perkins and Jack Santo's were outside right, But what he
Speaker 3: could say was that when he did get in, he
Speaker 3: saw Mabel Monahan's condition, and he saw that John True
Speaker 3: was sitting with Mabel Monahan's head in his lap. He
Speaker 3: also attributes certain statements to John True, gives the police
Speaker 3: reason to believe that John True is neck deep in
Speaker 3: this whole thing. And then Baxter Shorter, they being their
Speaker 3: key witness, they advise him to get police protection, to
Speaker 3: leave town, to be very careful because you know, he's
Speaker 3: talking to the police. And at some point it's going
Speaker 3: to become obvious that someone is talking to the police,
Speaker 3: because the press was covering this exhaustively. And at one
Speaker 3: point someone and I never could determine exactly which one did,
Speaker 3: it was a police officer who made a statement that
Speaker 3: seemed to point the finger directly at Baxter Shorter as
Speaker 3: the one who was singing as the canary if you will,
Speaker 3: and it got very dangerous for him. So the police
Speaker 3: went to the DA, who was Ernie Roll at the time,
Speaker 3: and said, look, we've got to arrest pant Santos, Perkins
Speaker 3: and Graham. We've got to and John True. We have
Speaker 3: to arrest those guys right away, because what they're going
Speaker 3: to if they find out, once they see this story,
Speaker 3: they're going to find out it's Baxter Shorter. He could
Speaker 3: be the only one it could be who's talking to us,
Speaker 3: and they're going to kill him. They went to Backs
Speaker 3: and the DA said, no, you don't have it. You
Speaker 3: don't have enough information, you don't have enough evidence, and
Speaker 3: you can't justify the arrest. And it's true that all
Speaker 3: they had was the word of someone who was in
Speaker 3: self an accomplice, no particular corroboration at that point, and
Speaker 3: he also had not really seen a lot of what
Speaker 3: went down in the house until he got inside. They
Speaker 3: so he refused to allow them to file the case,
Speaker 3: and the police went to him and so did the
Speaker 3: DA and told Baxter you need to get out of town.
Speaker 3: You need to accept police protection. Baxter Shorter said, no,
Speaker 3: if I do that, then they'll really know that it
Speaker 3: was me singing, and he refused. Well, that turned out
Speaker 3: to be that was not a bad idea on his part,
Speaker 3: But it turned out to be not a good idea either,
Speaker 3: because he ultimately was kidnapped and according to his wife,
Speaker 3: was kidnapped out of the house, out of their house
Speaker 3: by Emmett Perkins, and was never seen again. It was
Speaker 3: widely believed they killed him, but his body was never found.
Speaker 2: You also say that they're now urgently looking for Jack
Speaker 2: Santo and there's another reason other than his link to
Speaker 2: this crime. Tell us what else they suspect him of
Speaker 2: being involved in.
Speaker 3: So Jack Santa's actually had been a suspect in a
Speaker 3: number of murders in the northern California area, in the
Speaker 3: gold mining area and in rural areas up there. He
Speaker 3: himself was into He himself was suspected of killing a miner,
Speaker 3: and perhaps with the help of EMMITTT. Perkins, a gold
Speaker 3: miner up in the I'm trying to remember it was
Speaker 3: the Gold Country, I think it was. And also the
Speaker 3: very heinous murder of a man and his three children,
Speaker 3: his three children plus a neighbor child. And when I
Speaker 3: say children, I mean between ages two and six. They
Speaker 3: had all been murdered and stucked in the trunk of
Speaker 3: the car, so he was suspected in all of that,
Speaker 3: and that became revealed as well when he got arrested
Speaker 3: ultimately for the Mabel Monahan murder. They looked into it
Speaker 3: further and found enough evidence ultimately to file that case
Speaker 3: against him and Emmett Perkins.
Speaker 2: Now they have to find Barbara on these two men,
Speaker 2: so they're they were under surveillance, but apparently they lost
Speaker 2: track of them. So a policewoman had spotted them earlier,
Speaker 2: or spotted her earlier at a shopping mall, and they
Speaker 2: decided just to wait and see if she'd return, and
Speaker 2: she did.
Speaker 3: As a matter of fact, they had said that they
Speaker 3: were keeping Barbara on their radar and they were watching her,
Speaker 3: but when it came time to go and arrest everybody,
Speaker 3: they couldn't find anyone. So the only thing they knew
Speaker 3: to do, the policewoman went back to the area at
Speaker 3: the shopping mall where she had last been seen two
Speaker 3: weeks earlier, and hoped that she would come back. And
Speaker 3: it took a few days, and she didn't for quite
Speaker 3: some time, but then ultimately she did, and they followed
Speaker 3: her as she got on one bus and then another
Speaker 3: and then another and followed her back to this flophouse
Speaker 3: in Lynnwood where she was staying with Jack Santos and
Speaker 3: Emmitt Perkins, and all three got arrested.
Speaker 2: Now, how does the prosecution deal with the disappearance of
Speaker 2: Baxter Shorter? What did they do? And we haven't mentioned
Speaker 2: the incredible pressure on the prosecution by the press itself.
Speaker 2: You talk quite a bit about the press s and
Speaker 2: its behavior, right, the press.
Speaker 3: Was all over this case from day one, creating its
Speaker 3: own pressure on the police, primarily the police, because until
Speaker 3: the case is file, the prosecutor has no role to play, really,
Speaker 3: and they were after anything they could find. So when
Speaker 3: they had Baxter Shorter, oh relief, We've got a case
Speaker 3: we can handle. We can file this. We're going to
Speaker 3: get enough evidence ultimately we're going to be able to
Speaker 3: prove who did it. But then Baxter Shorter disappears. Now
Speaker 3: they suddenly don't have a case again. Now they have
Speaker 3: to look for someone who will put it all together.
Speaker 3: But in the meantime, with Baxter Shorter having been disappeared
Speaker 3: and every reason to believe it was one of those
Speaker 3: defendants or more than one of those defendants who were
Speaker 3: involved in his disappearance, they had to arrest them, but
Speaker 3: they still had no case. They still really had no
Speaker 3: eyewitness who could testify to exactly what happened now that
Speaker 3: Baxter Shorter was gone. They really didn't because Baxter Shorter's friend,
Speaker 3: William Upshaw, had heard from Baxter what had happened, but
Speaker 3: they couldn't get That's not enough to present a case.
Speaker 3: So all Upshaw had was really hearsay. So they were
Speaker 3: desperate then to get those three defendants or four defendants
Speaker 3: into custody. They went after Barbara, they went after Santos,
Speaker 3: they went after Perkins, and they they got him into custody.
Speaker 3: Then they had to go after John True. Now at
Speaker 3: that point, the only one that they really could legitimately
Speaker 3: turn state's evidence and expect to get any traction from
Speaker 3: the jury was John True. He had been a deep
Speaker 3: sea diver, and unlike the others, he had no record whatsoever.
Speaker 3: If they could turn him, they stood a chance of
Speaker 3: even of putting a case together. And he was easy
Speaker 3: to find because he was working up in a shipyard
Speaker 3: in the Bay Area, actually you know, provably employed. The
Speaker 3: Francisco Police Chief went there with Lieutenant Coveney from Burbank
Speaker 3: PD and They picked him up and put him in
Speaker 3: and took him into custody as one of the conspirators
Speaker 3: in the case. At first he refused to talk, but
Speaker 3: they sweated him, and they sweated him, and they sweated
Speaker 3: him for days. They kept him there and he wasn't cracking. Finally,
Speaker 3: they brought in the friends that he knew were closest
Speaker 3: to him and got them to try and break him
Speaker 3: and break him down and make him talk. They finally
Speaker 3: got through to him, but he no fool. He said,
Speaker 3: I want the word of the actual district attorney himself
Speaker 3: that I get complete immunity for anything that is in
Speaker 3: connection with this case before I tell you one word.
Speaker 3: He got on They said done, consider it done. Now
Speaker 3: this statement that he ultimately gives. So da Ernie Roll
Speaker 3: got on the phone with John True and promised him
Speaker 3: and said, you will not be prosecuted for any involvement
Speaker 3: in this case whatsoever. No charges will be remaining against you.
Speaker 3: And he said, okay, fine, then I'll talk. At that point,
Speaker 3: the prosecutor, one of the prosecutors who would handle the case,
Speaker 3: Adolph Alexander, flew up to San Francisco and took an
Speaker 3: official statement from John true forty two page statement with
Speaker 3: an official stenographer taking down every word. That statement never
Speaker 3: got revealed to the defense, and it did have significant
Speaker 3: differences between not only his ultimate trial testimony, but the
Speaker 3: statement given by backs are shorter.
Speaker 2: Let's use this as an opportunity to stop to hear
Speaker 2: these messages. Now. In the research of this you talked
Speaker 2: about that you looked at the legendary career an icon
Speaker 2: j Miller Levy, and you said he was a legendary prosecutor.
Speaker 2: As you worked on this book and you looked at
Speaker 2: these transcripts, you got a different picture of this icon,
Speaker 2: didn't you.
Speaker 3: I did. It was so weird. I mean, one of
Speaker 3: the things that drew me to the case was the
Speaker 3: excitement in getting able in being able to see this
Speaker 3: icon of all of us. Back in the day when
Speaker 3: I was in the DA's office, Jamiller Levy was famous
Speaker 3: and just a renowned prosecutor who had handled all the
Speaker 3: biggest cases. He prosecuted Carol Chessman, he prosecuted Eluing Scott.
Speaker 3: I think it was the first nobody homicide in California.
Speaker 3: Big deal. I mean, no, It's very, very hard to
Speaker 3: prosecute a case when you have no body of the victim,
Speaker 3: and I did it. I had two cases like that,
Speaker 3: and there's a lot of evidence you cannot get when
Speaker 3: you don't have the victim's body. So it was a
Speaker 3: big deal that he did that. He didn't have DNA,
Speaker 3: so I was very excited to see him in action.
Speaker 3: And as I read this transcript, I discovered I rediscovered
Speaker 3: the saying don't meet your heroes. It was pretty shocking
Speaker 3: to see the It was just ugly, snow ip, very
Speaker 3: ad hominem personalized attacks he launched against Barbara. In particular,
Speaker 3: he went after her in a way that even a
Speaker 3: federal district judge later said was unseemly. I've never seen
Speaker 3: a prosecutor go after a defendant the way he went
Speaker 3: after Barbara, and he did it in a personal way
Speaker 3: and in a way that really pushed the legal envelope
Speaker 3: as well. Although the laws have changed, and some of
Speaker 3: the things he did back then were lawful, were permitted,
Speaker 3: they soon were not, and within a few years after
Speaker 3: that trial, in fact, many of the things he did
Speaker 3: were deemed to be improper and would have required a mistrial.
Speaker 3: But back when he did it, for example, the Griffin rule.
Speaker 3: Right now we have called the comment rule back in California.
Speaker 3: Back in the fifties, in California, you were allowed to
Speaker 3: comment on a defendants invocation of his right to remain silent.
Speaker 3: You could say, if he was innocent, he would have
Speaker 3: spoken to the police. If he was innocent, he wouldn't
Speaker 3: have been voked his right to remain silent. That was
Speaker 3: held in federal court back in eighteen ninety three to
Speaker 3: be improper. There are many reasons why I defended is
Speaker 3: afraid to talk, and not all of them mean he's guilty.
Speaker 3: It's not fair to say that you're protected by the
Speaker 3: Fifth Amendment and then use your reliance on the Fifth
Speaker 3: Amendment as proof of guilt. So the FEZ never allowed it,
Speaker 3: or hadn't for quite some time, but as of nineteen
Speaker 3: fifty three, it was allowed, and J. Miller Levy flogged
Speaker 3: all of them, but especially Barbara, with the fact that
Speaker 3: she had invoked her right to remain silent when she
Speaker 3: was hauled in front of the grand jury in this case.
Speaker 3: So that was allowed, and yet the degree was remarkable.
Speaker 3: But there was much more that he did, including putting
Speaker 3: stool pigeons in her cell at a point in time
Speaker 3: when it was not legal to do that back then
Speaker 3: you could. Back then you could, I want to be
Speaker 3: clear about that, but hiding discovery was not legal even then.
Speaker 3: Hiding John True's initial statement to Adolph Alexander was illegal.
Speaker 3: And when it was discovered long after the conviction that
Speaker 3: he had done so, that they had not revealed that statement,
Speaker 3: which would have made a difference, I think, and the
Speaker 3: way the jury saw what he said and then saw
Speaker 3: the difference between his testimony and that first statement, it
Speaker 3: might well have made a big difference for Barbara. In particular,
Speaker 3: that caused actually a Senate subcommittee hearing to discuss changing
Speaker 3: the actual written laws as opposed to case law about
Speaker 3: governing a prosecutor's duty to a provide discovery. So there
Speaker 3: was a lot that went wrong there, but it was
Speaker 3: the unseemly manner that he did it, in the way
Speaker 3: he cross examined her and the way he argued the
Speaker 3: case that was so shocking. There were points that I
Speaker 3: really had to stand up and walk away because it
Speaker 3: was this is a horrible No defendant deserves his treatment.
Speaker 3: This is not a fair trial.
Speaker 2: You write about the dramatic testimony of Barbara, she you
Speaker 2: don't think that it was anything, but she had no
Speaker 2: choice but to take the stand. And then you describe
Speaker 2: j Miller and Adolf Alexander line by line, going through
Speaker 2: these notes between this police plant that you mentioned, Donna
Speaker 2: Prow and her luring Barbara into looking for an alibi,
Speaker 2: because that's what she needed to do to stay off
Speaker 2: death row, was to have some alibi, and her attorney,
Speaker 2: Jack Hardy, pleaded with her while she was in custody, saying,
Speaker 2: you are going to go to death row if you
Speaker 2: do not have an alibi.
Speaker 3: Correct. So back then we had I think, actually every
Speaker 3: state has a felony murder rule. What that means is
Speaker 3: if you commit one of a list of violent felonies,
Speaker 3: and robbery and burglary are two of them, and a
Speaker 3: murder occurs in the course of it, homicide occurs in
Speaker 3: the course of it. Even if the homicide is accidental,
Speaker 3: even if you don't mean to kill the victim, it
Speaker 3: doesn't matter. You're on the hook for murder. Now, back then,
Speaker 3: even if you did not personally commit the murder, you
Speaker 3: were still on the hook for murder as well as
Speaker 3: a special circumstance of murder committed in the course of
Speaker 3: that felony and that's what leads to the death penalty.
Speaker 3: So the only defense left was alibi, and if she
Speaker 3: could not come up with an alibi, she would face
Speaker 3: the death penalty. The very least she would get is
Speaker 3: life without the possibility of parole.
Speaker 2: You write about the press and its influence in this trial,
Speaker 2: if it were to compare to today.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what was interesting to me. That was another thing
Speaker 3: was the manner in which the press behaved. There were
Speaker 3: many outlets that reported on this trial, but all of
Speaker 3: them took the same tack. All of them went after
Speaker 3: Barbara as the villainous, the mastermind of all things, and
Speaker 3: the stone cold, cold hearted, vicious murder. They spared no
Speaker 3: they spared no adjective in describing her as this bloodthirsty monster.
Speaker 3: It was remarkable to me that they couldn't. They were
Speaker 3: so credulous when it came to John True. John True's
Speaker 3: story to me was full of holes right from the start.
Speaker 3: Even if I didn't know about his earlier statement to
Speaker 3: Adolph Alexander, I would still have thought, this makes no sense.
Speaker 3: This testimony, this story, the whole description of what happened
Speaker 3: when he entered the house behind Barbara made no sense
Speaker 3: to me. Just physically, logically made no sense. No one
Speaker 3: questioned it, not one person. They all hung laurels on him,
Speaker 3: calling him virtually the savior, the rescuer of mont Mabel Monahan,
Speaker 3: because they're buying his story that he was the one
Speaker 3: trying to save Mabel from the vicious pistol whipping administered
Speaker 3: by Barbara Graham. It was absurd. The whole story was absurd,
Speaker 3: but no one questioned it until the very end of
Speaker 3: the trial, when one reporter from up north, Ed Montgomery,
Speaker 3: who worked for the San Francisco Examiner, came down to
Speaker 3: the courtroom and actually watched the trial for a period
Speaker 3: of time and said, this doesn't fit, this doesn't make sense.
Speaker 3: He became Barbara's champion ultimately and decided to help her
Speaker 3: to try and get the case, the conviction reversed, or
Speaker 3: at least get a grant of clemency.
Speaker 2: You write, going back just to the trial that Jack Hardy,
Speaker 2: in his closing statements said that the prosecution in this
Speaker 2: case went to the links that he'd never seen to
Speaker 2: pin this atrocity on someone, and there wasn't much difference
Speaker 2: who they pinned it on. Utterly reckless means with a
Speaker 2: person trapped in jail, were taken to try and trap them,
Speaker 2: to get them to convict themselves. And you write in
Speaker 2: explanation marks that neither have you seen anything like this
Speaker 2: in your career?
Speaker 3: No, I have not. I have not seen a prosecutor
Speaker 3: go after a defendant this way, hiding discovery, pulling every
Speaker 3: trick in the book they could possibly think of, particularly
Speaker 3: focused on the one that you know is the least
Speaker 3: culpable of the three. Well, whether the jury could see
Speaker 3: that or not, the jury didn't know all that they knew.
Speaker 3: Jamiller Levy and Adolph Alexander knew very well what John
Speaker 3: True initially said, knew very well what Baxter Shorter said,
Speaker 3: which conflicted with John True's account in many significant ways.
Speaker 3: They had every reason to doubt the veracity of his testimony,
Speaker 3: and nevertheless targeted Barbara with a zeal that was just unbelievable.
Speaker 3: And I think in part it's because she became the get.
Speaker 3: She became the one they had to go after and
Speaker 3: the one they had to convict, and the one they
Speaker 3: had to get into the gas chamber. Because she was
Speaker 3: the hardest of them all to believe that she would
Speaker 3: be involved in something like this. The two men, Jack
Speaker 3: Santos and Emmitt Perkins. You just look at them, you
Speaker 3: know they did it. There was no challenge there, but
Speaker 3: Barbara that was the big challenge, and they went after
Speaker 3: her in that manner, I think because that was the
Speaker 3: big notch in the belt and that's what was so
Speaker 3: sickening about what happened.
Speaker 2: I want to thank you so much for coming on
Speaker 2: and talking about your book, Trial by Ambush, The Truth
Speaker 2: About the Case of Barbara Graham. For those people that
Speaker 2: might want to find out more about this book. Do
Speaker 2: you have a website and do you do any social media?
Speaker 3: I do both, so I have an author's website Marcia
Speaker 3: clarkbooks dot com. You can see all kinds of information
Speaker 3: about Trial by Ambush and the other books I've written,
Speaker 3: and then social media, my handle is that Marsha Clark.
Speaker 2: Yes, thank you so much. There is so much more
Speaker 2: for people to discover. We just touched on the appeal,
Speaker 2: but also the horrible upbringing and the abandonment by her
Speaker 2: mother that certainly had something to do with shaping her character.
Speaker 2: And so it's a fascinating book that you go so
Speaker 2: in depth into this trial and all the prosecutorial misconduct
Speaker 2: by the prosecution and also just the tale of the
Speaker 2: young girl that was abandoned and then beset upon by
Speaker 2: the press and the prosecution just to get a conviction
Speaker 2: and a death penalty sentence. Thank you so much for
Speaker 2: this interview, Miss Marcia Clark, Trial by Ambush. Thank you
Speaker 2: so much for this interview, and have a great night,
Speaker 2: good night.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for having me Dan, it was
Speaker 3: a pleasure.
Speaker 2: Thank you.