I mope most mornings and meander most afternoons. I drag my IV drip and stumble. I study the stacks of old newspapers and notice my name now and then. I bop back to better times. I relive my reign as a nihilist knight and dream draconian.
LOS ANGELES HERALD-EXPRESS, JUNE 3, 1955:
MONAHAN KILLERS EXECUTED AT SAN QUENTIN
At 10:00 this morning, Barbara Graham, John “Jack” Santo, and Emmett Perkins, the convicted slayers of Burbank widow Mabel Monahan, went to their deaths in the gas chamber at San Quentin State Prison.
The executions capped a frantic series of appeals and phone calls to Governor Goodwin J. Knight. Governor Knight rejected last-minute pleas to save the lives of the convicted killers and sent them to their deaths for the 1953 murder. Santo wept and squealed as he was dragged to the gas chamber. Perkins and Miss Graham submitted to their punishment stoically. Miss Graham asserted her innocence a few moments before she was put to death. Los Angeles County ProsecutorJ. Miller Leavy, who successfully tried the case, called her statement “poppy-cock. Barbara Graham was just as guilty as her murderous cohorts, and she was justly punished for her grievous transgression.”
On the evening of March 9, 1953, Santo, Perkins, Miss Graham, and two men named John True and Baxter Shorter broke into Mabel Monahan’s house, convinced that she was harboring $100,000 belonging to a gambler nephew. True and Shorter looked on in horror as Perkins, Santo, and Miss Graham pistol-whipped Mrs. Monahan in an effort to get her to reveal the location of the money. Mrs. Monahan told them that there was no cache of money, a statement which was proven to be true. Enraged, Santo, Perkins, and Miss Graham beat Mrs. Monahan to death.
John True voluntarily surrendered and turned state’s evidence. Baxter Shorter disappeared before Santo, Perkins, and Miss Graham were apprehended. It is assumed that Santo and Perkins killed him to ensure his silence.
Santo and Perkins were suspected of having committed several other robbery-murders in northern California, dating back tO 1951. Miss Graham was a narcotics addict and former prostitute. Her good looks and steadfast protestations of her innocence gained her a sympathetic audience among the general public and a small sector of the press. Before Miss Graham, Santo and Perkins’s trial, rumors of police-DA’s Office “dirty tricks” aimed at finagling a confession from Miss Graham surfaced. Deputy DA Leavy called the rumors “Poppy-cock. Every attempt that the DA’s Office and members of the Los Angeles and Beverly Hills Police Departments made in order to get Miss Graham to recant her preposterous allegations of innocence were entirely legal and aboveboard.”
The bodies of the three convicted killers will be shipped to undisclosed locations for burial.
LOS ANGELES MIRROR, DECEMBER 17, 1955:
PAYOLA PROBE IN WORKS
HEADED FOR GRAND JURY?
A confidential source within the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office told Mirror reporters that members of the Beverly Hills and Los Angeles Police Departments, along with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office, are conducting a probe into “Payola”: The practice of bribing radio announcers, or “disc jockeys,” into giving certain recordings preferential amounts of playing time on their programs.
The probe will allegedly focus on KMPC disc jockey Flash Flood and his treatment of Linda Lansing’s current 45-RPM single, “Baby, It’s Cold Inside.” Flood (the former Arthur John Beauchamp) has been playing the novelty song at least sixteen times a day since the record was released on October 1 i. When asked to comment on this, Flood told a Mirror reporter: “What can I say? I dig the side, and I dig Linda Lansing, and nobody’s paid me to dig either one. And I dig all the publicity I’ve been getting, because it’s boosted my ratings way up, but I don’t dig all the heavy treatment I’ve been getting from the fuzz, although I do dig all the heavy names that are getting caught up in this thing.”
Linda Lansing (the former Hilda Claire Wassmansdorff) is the look-alike younger sister of actress Joi Lansing (the former Joyce Wassmansdorff), costar of The French Line and Son of Sinbad. “Baby, It’s Cold Inside” was Miss Lansing’s debut recording, and it was written for her by acclaimed songsmith Sammy Cahn. Miss Lansing is chiefly known as the model and pitchwoman for Teitelbaum Furs in Beverly Hills, and her “gimmick” is performing advertisement jingles, fur-clad, on Tom Duggan’s weekly gabfest on Channel 13. She recently appeared as a singer at the Igloo Club in Long Beach and the Trianon Bowling Alley lounge in South Gate, but both engagements were considered unsuccessful. Flash Flood told the Mirror: “I dug Linda’s act at both venues. I dig the way she sells a song, and I dig it that she wears short fur coats and nothing else as her trademark. Frankly, I dig Linda the most, but that doesn’t mean I took payola to spin her side.”