“Okay. But I’ve had it. I’m leaving!”
“Good! That’s the best thing you’ve said since I first met you. And the sooner the better.”
“Right now soon enough?”
“Perfect. Good-by, Hank!”
For the next few days Barbara tried to get in touch with Emmett Perkins but was unsuccessful. She was broke and needed money for food. In desperation, she issued a bum check at a super market. She tried again to get in touch with Perkins and again was unsuccessful, and again she issued a bad check. Things were getting hot for her. She still had the old probation rap hanging over her head and the bad check charge would throw her into prison for a long sentence.
She bundled up Tommy and took him to Mrs. Anna Webb, Hank’s mother. She then packed her clothes and checked into a motel under an assumed name, after which she went looking for Emmett Perkins again. This time she found him. With him was Jack Santo, a big, hulking guy whose morals came from a jungle and his character from the teeth of a tiger.
“I’m hot,” Barbara told them. “I’ve put out a couple of bum checks and unless I make them good the cops will throw me in jail for a long time.”
“How much?” Santo asked.
“Thirty dollars. I’ve got to make them good today or else.”
Santo handed her the thirty dollars. “Here, go pick up the checks and come back here. We’ve got a proposition that will put you on easy street.”
Barbara snatched the money from Santo’s hand and dashed out the door toward the super market to pick up the checks she had issued.
The body of Mrs. Mabel Monohan was discovered on March 11, two days after her murder, by Mrs. Monohan’s gardener, who had noticed the floodlights burning and the front door to the house ajar. He went into the house and what he saw turned his stomach. Only one other victim of gangland’s force had ever died as brutally. She was Estelle Carey, an attractive young woman, the girl friend of Nick Circella, a Capone hood.
The Parkside Avenue home of Mrs. Monohan was dark and quiet on this night of March 9, 1953. Mrs. Monohan was alone in the house. She felt secure. There was a high stone wall around the back yard. Floodlights illuminated both the front and back yards. There was a double bolt and chain on the front door. All the windows were fixed firmly with special locking devices. Her daughter, Iris, divorced from Los Angeles and Las Vegas gambling kingpin Tudor Scherer, fearing for her mother’s safety because the elderly woman lived alone, had seen to it that every device for her safety was provided.
The only thing she had omitted was a caution that her mother never admit a stranger into the house on any pretext. Mrs. Monohan, a kindly person, brought on her violent death because of her faith in human nature.
The facts of the murder, as testified to by several principals and near-principals in the crime, were that on the night of March 9, 1953, a brunette young woman rang the bell of Mrs. Monohan’s home. Mrs. Monohan was reading a mystery story — “The Purple Pony Murder” — and when the bell range she rose from her chair and hobbled to the front door and cautiously opened the peephole, turned on the front porch light and peered through.
“Yes, what is it?” she asked of the young woman at the door.
“My car is broken down in the middle of the intersection and I am unable to get it started. I was wondering if you would be kind enough to let me use your telephone to call a garage?” There was distress in the young woman’s voice.
“All right, dear,” Mrs. Monohan answered, eager to help a young woman in trouble. She unbolted the door.
As the door swung open the young woman and several men overwhelmed her. The young woman smashed the heavy butt of a pistol against the frail woman’s head. It was a vicious blow and Mrs. Monohan reeled backward and let out a high moan.
“My God!” she moaned. “My God! Don’t kill me. Please don’t kill me!”
Several more blows rained on her head and she slumped to the floor unconscious. The young woman found a pillow case and drew it over the fallen victim’s head. One of the men pulled the woman’s hands behind her back and tied them together. It was a useless and senseless gesture because Mrs. Monohan was unconscious and would have remained so for hours.
They weren’t satisfied, however. Another of the men drew a garrotlike noose around her neck and shoved her with his foot. The gang then began a systemtic search of the house, their search centered on a floor safe they believed was somewhere in the home. They found none.
The men and lone woman swore in frustration, made another frantic search of the premises and then left. Why the murder?
Tudor Scherer had lived in Mrs. Monohan’s home when he was married to Iris.
Later, when Iris divorced him, he continued to visit Mrs. Monohan frequently. On these occasions he was seen carrying a small black bag into the Parkside house. It was assumed that the bag contained huge amounts of cash from Scherer’s Las Vegas gambling casinos.
The house was cased by several small-time hoods, none of whom had enough intelligence to come in out of the rain. Among these were Solly Davis, a former Mickey Cohen mobster; Baxter Shorter; Indian George, and William Upshaw. Baxter Shorter contacted Jack Santo and told him of what he had seen.
“You know Scherer, Jack. The guy is loaded. He skims a lot of dough off the top from his gambling joint in Vegas and it’s my guess that the dough is in that house, in a safe. There’s one old lady living there now — Scherer’s mother-in-law. It should be a pushover. All you need to do is get a box-man to crack the safe.”
“How sure are you that Scherer is carrying money into the house in that bag? It could be a few changes of underwear and socks.”
“No, no. He stays in the house about an hour and comes out.”
“With the bag?”
“Yeah, with the bag. And it is empty. I could tell from the way he was holding it.”
“Okay. I’ll look into it. Have you told anyone else about this? Anyone else know about it?”
“Not that I know of. I haven’t talked to anyone else about it. If anyone else has cased the play I haven’t heard of it.”
Shorter lied. He had mentioned it to Indian George and George talked to Solly Davis and William Upshaw about it. That tied all four together as conspirators if not principals in the crime.
Lieutenant Robert Coveney, a smart, tough, honest and vigilant cop, in charge of the investigation of the murder, combed the underworld for some word or clue that would lead him to the killers. He determined to put the human wolf pack who had committed the murder into the gas chamber. He had viewed the chilling sight of the dead woman, the blood-smeared face beaten almost beyond recognition and the memory of it burned his insides.
Indian George read the papers on the story of the murder, the quoted statements of Lieutenant Coveney that teams of detectives were on the case and that they wouldn’t rest until the killers were nabbed, tried, and paid the full penalty for the crime. Indian George was scared. He could be involved. He could go to prison for life, or he might wind up in the gas chamber.
On March 15, one week after the murder, Lieutenant Coveney got the first break of the case. He received a call from Indian George.
“Who were the men that talked to you about robbing the home of Mrs. Monohan?” Lieutenant Coveney asked. His insides were churning with excitement.
“I had nothing to do with this caper, lieutenant,” George said. “You’re not going to hold me, are you?”
“Not if you had nothing to do with it. Who were the men?”
“Well, Baxter Shorter told me about it and I talked to Solly Davis and William Upshaw about it. I don’t know if they were in on it or not. Honest.”
“Okay. I’ll check it out. Baxter Shorter, Solly Davis, and William Upshaw. Anything else you want to tell me? Any little detail you may have overlooked or let slip your memory?”