IV
The Crime Against Marcella
17
The initial newspaper accounts were both lurid and disinterested. Just another murder, the reports seemed to be saying.
From the Los Angeles Herald Express, June 23, 1955:
NURSE FOUND MURDERED IN EL MONTE
Strangulation Death for Attractive Divorced Mother
Scouts and Their Leader Make Grisly Discovery
EL MONTE, JUNE 22—A Boy Scout troop and their leader made a grisly discovery early Sunday morning when returning from an overnight camping trip in the San Gabriel Mountains. When passing Arroyo High School on South Peck Road, one of the Scouts, Danny Johnson, age 12, thought he saw an arm poking out of a line of scrub that runs along the fence on the school's south side. He called this to the attention of his troop leader, James Pleshette, 28, of Sierra Madre. Pleshette went to investigate and discovered the nude body of a woman. He called El Monte police immediately.
Description Broadcast
Police went to the scene and immediately sent out a description of the woman to all Los Angeles TV and radio stations. Response to the broadcast was gratifyingly quick. Mrs. Gaylord Wilder, an El Monte resident, thought the description fit her tenant, Mrs. Marcella Harris, who had been gone since Friday night. Mrs. Wilder was brought to the morgue, where she positively identified the dead woman as Mrs. Harris.
Good Mother
Mrs. Wilder started to sob upon viewing the body. "Oh, God, what a tragedy!" she said. "Marcella was such a good woman. A good mother, devoted to her son." Mrs. Harris, 43, was divorced from her husband, William "Doc" Harris, several years ago. They have a nine-year-old son, who was spending the weekend with his father. When notified of the death, Harris (who has been eliminated as a suspect) said, "I have every hope the police will quickly catch my wife's killer." Nine-year-old Michael, distraught, is now living with his father in Los Angeles. Mrs. Harris worked as head nurse at the Packard-Bell Electronics plant in Santa Monica. Both the El Monte Police Department and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department have mounted a full-scale investigation.
I sat and thought, feeling strangely calm, yet engulfed by a prickly sensation when I put down the newspaper. It was too long after the facts, I told myself, too far away, too prosaic a form of murder. Strictly a non sequitur. I didn't want to catch myself up in another logical fallacy.
I needed statistics, and the only person I knew who could furnish them was a crime-buff law clerk in Lorna's firm. I called the office and got him. The receptionist recognized my voice and gave me the cold shoulder, but put me through anyway. After several minutes of amenities, I popped my question: "Bob, what are the statistics on strangulation murders of women, where the killer is not a known intimate of the victim?"
Bob didn't have to think: "Commonplace, but they usually catch the killer fast. Barroom jobs, drunks strangling prostitutes, that kind of thing. Very often the killer is remorseful, confesses, and cops a plea. Is this an academic question, Fred?"
"Yeah, strictly. How about premeditated strangulation murders of women?"
"Including psychopaths?"
"No, presupposing relative sanity on the part of the killer."
"Relative sanity, that's a hot one. Very rare, kid, very rare indeed. What's this all about?"
"It's about an ex-cop with time on his hands. Thanks a lot, Bob. Goodbye."
I watched TV that night, but television coverage of the murder was scant. The dead woman's face was flashed on the screen, a photograph taken some twenty years before upon her graduation from nursing school. Marcella Harris had been a very handsome woman: high, strong cheekbones, large widely spaced eyes, and a determined mouth.
The somber-voiced announcer called on all concerned citizens "who might be able to help the police" to call the detective bureau of the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department. A phone number was flashed across the bottom of the screen for a few brief seconds, before the announcer started a used-car commercial. I turned the TV off.
I started collecting all the newspaper articles I could find about the murder. By Tuesday the Harris murder had been relegated to the third page. From the Los Angeles Times, June 24, 1955:
LAST HOURS OF DEAD NURSE RECONSTRUCTED
LOS ANGELES, JUNE 24—Marcella Harris, who was found strangled in El Monte Sunday morning, was last seen alive in a cocktail lounge on nearby Valley Boulevard. Police revealed today that eyewitnesses placed the attractive redheaded nurse at Hank's Hot Spot, a bar at 18391 Valley Boulevard in South El Monte, between the hours of 8:00 and 11:30 Saturday night. She left alone, but was seen huddling in conversation with a dark-haired man in his forties and a blond woman in her late twenties. Police artists are now at work assembling composite drawings of the pair, who at this time are the only suspects in the grisly strangulation murder.
Father and Son Together
"Michael will always bear the scars, of that I am sure," William "Doc" Harris, a handsome man in his late fifties, said yesterday. "But I know that I can make up for the love he has lost in losing his mother." Harris ruffled his nine-year-old son's hair fondly. Michael, a tall, bespectacled youngster, said, "I just hope the police get the guy who killed my mom."
It was a peaceful but sad scene at the Harris apartment on Beverly Boulevard. Sad because police are powerless in dealing with the grief of a motherless nine-year-old boy. El Monte police spokesman Sergeant A.D. Wisenhunt said, "We're doing everything within our power to track down the killer. We have no idea where Mrs. Harris was killed, but we figure that it had to be in the El Monte area. The coroner places the time of her death at between 2:00 A.M. and 5:00 A.M., and the Scouts found her at 7:30 A.M. We have detectives and uniformed officers out circulating composite drawings of the two people Mrs. Harris was last seen talking to. We have to be patient—only diligent police work will crack this case."
Half of me felt crazy for even following newspaper accounts of this "case," but the other half of me screamed inside when the words "cocktail lounge" jumped out at me from the printed page. I hemmed and hawed, and pounded myself internally for several hours, until I realized there would never be a moment's peace until I gave it a whirl. Then I picked up the phone and called Sergeant Reuben Ramos at Rampart Division.
"Reuben, this is Fred Underhill."
"Jesus H. Christ on a crutch, where the hell have you been?"
"Away."
"That's for sure, man. Jesus Christ, did you get fucked! What happened? I heard tons of rumors, but nothing that sounded like the straight dope."
I sighed. I hadn't counted on recalling the past to a former colleague. "I got the wrong man, Rube, and the department had to make me look bad to take the onus off them. That's it."
Reuben didn't buy it. "I'll settle for that, man," he said skeptically, "but what's up? You need a favor, right?"
"Right. I need you to run someone through R&I for me."
Reuben sighed. "You got some amateur gig going?"
"Kind of. Are you ready?"
"Hit me."
"Marcella Harris, white female, forty-three years old."
"Isn't she that dead dame from—"
"Yeah," I cut in. "Can you run her and get back to me as soon as possible?"