Towards the end of his life, the prosecutor clearly declared his conscience, who sent 32 -year -old Barbara Graham to the order of death. As J. Miller Leavy saw, in June 1955, Cyanide Gas was compassionate compared to the crime of execution.
Leavy won many high -profile cases during her Multi -Multi -Multi -Multiple Matter in the Los Angeles District Regional Attorney Office, but very few drew more attention to women nicknamed “Bloody Babs”.
The street and Brassy were and physically striking, a small time runner and “Dice Girl” remained in casinos to encourage men to drink and gamble. He had a heroin habit and a baby to be fed. In March 1953, he joined the host robbery of a Burbank widow of a disabled Burbank widow in Bludgeoned and drowned in the firm of four men.
In this series, Christopher Goffard, Los Angeles and the old crimes beyond the celebrities, forgotten, uncertainty, dive into the archives, and the memories of those there again visit.
Raising and talented, Leavy, with a talent for the theater, told the jury members not only to join the robbery of Graham, but also in the center of violence. “Barbara Graham tied Mabel Monahan’s hands behind him, flapping him with the pistol and he left him to die, Le Leavy 85 -year -old Leavy said in 1990, a Times columnist. “It didn’t bother me to send him to the gas room.”
For people’s lawyer’s authorized date of the regional lawyer, he repeats the claim that Leavy’s legend Burnisher and Graham fluttering the victim. For generations, Leavy appeared so greatly for the prosecutor that when they lost a case, “Leavy could win him”.
Marcia Clark will be one of the best known prosecutors he In the mid -1990s, during the malicious Oj Simpson case, Generation heard all the stories about Leavy in his office for 14 years. In November, he started to investigate the Graham case for his book “Trial by by Push”. He entered the project with admiration for Leavy and he definitely appeared to be cheating.
Dist. Atty. J. Miller Leavy left, questioning a secret police officer Sam Sirianni during the hearing of Barbara Graham.
(Associated Press)
As a result, an important witness hid. The prosecution built the narrative based on the promise of a defendant with a good reason to lie. Da He did things that would be illegal today, Clark Clark said, sewing the prison informer who won Graham’s love and helps him with Doom.
“He was a very good lawyer, don’t get me wrong, Clar Clark said in an recent interview with Times. “But what I didn’t expect to see was that he was a poor quality player.”
From his arrest to execution, something about Barbara Graham inspired Crazy Verbiage, one of the journalists of the period. The newspapers described him as a cold, extremely gender murder from the Pulp Fiction pages. Sometimes it was “red ,, sometimes“ iced blonde ”. It was “Moll”. He was “suffocating .. “Blonde refrigerator was smooth Barbara Graham”.
Los Angeles Daily Mirror was hidden as a monster woman ”. Herald-Express was the most beautiful sacrifice that the gas chamber would claim ”.
He was abandoned by his mother, sent to the Ventura School, a ruthless school of reform, where he had emerged with crime training. He never went to high school. He hurried to live. He wrote bad controls. He gave the shop. He was caught for having drugs, prostitution and lying. He married four times. He had three children. He liked jazz.
He was broken while he was working as a chisin in a dice and poker house in El Monte and trying to raise a baby. A rude -looking law leakage called Jack Santo came. The gambling house was the guilty confederation of the man who ruled Emmett Perkins. They had heard that a retired Vaudeville artist Mabel Monahan had saved money in his house.
The minibus of Şerif, a Los Angeles district, is going through the gates of the San Quentin state prison carrying the convict murderers Jack Santo and Emmett Perkins.
(Bettmann Archive)
“These guys were very bad news, Clark Clark said. “I think much worse news than Barbara knows.”
Monahan, who has security awareness, would not open his door to anyone, not especially the hard -looking bandits. But the petite, beautiful Graham can get them in. And thus, on March 9, 1953, Graham appeared at the gate of Monahan with the story of his car.
Monahan allowed Graham to enter and followed the hooligans. In Santo, Perkins, Safecracker Baxter Shortter and John True, the self -served account would be considered as real by the authorities. The robbers dismissed the house, could not find it safe and Bludgeoned with a pillow case on Monahan’s head. Read a rich widow in California, ”read a title.
The detectives took shorter in weeks and took them to others. Perkins as documents in the Clark book “Leech [Monahan] In the temple ”with a gun.
Although he did not disappear soon after, he could have been a shorter state’s star witness. (According to one witness, Perkins was kidnapped by gun force and assumed to be dead.) The jury members would not be able to get the murder version.
This remained correct as the lock witness of the prosecution. He was given immunity for his testimony, minimized his own guilt – actually tried register Mon Monahan, dedi he said – and showed a finger to Graham. He said that the victim was holding his neck with one hand and the pistol was flapping him with the other hand.
From the left: Emmet Perkins, Jack Santo and Barbara Graham after being captured in May 1953.
(Los Angeles Times)
Hoping to make Graham’s conviction, the authorities planted an informant in La District Prison. The plant was Donna Prow, who was at the beginning of their 20s and served time for manslaughter. He approached Graham. He poured it into charm. Brought his sugar. The prison was alone and Graham fell for him.
“Hello baby,” Graham wrote in one of the many letters of the police. “Your note was so sweet, but I want you to be sure of your feelings, or I don’t want to start something we can’t finish. You are a very beautiful and desirable woman, honey and I want you so much.”
Graham had a desperate problem as the hearing approached – no Alibi – but ProW presented a solution. He arranged Graham’s acquaintance with a man who would lie for him. During the killing, he would claim that he was miles away at an Encino hotel.
They were all a police installation. Prow’s “friend” was a secret police officer named Sam Sirianni, and when Leavy admitted that Graham had brought together false excuses and that he was with his common defendants on the deadly night, he was destroyed.
However, Graham’s defense lawyer never had the chance to cross the bow. Da’s office had arranged his release of his release and abandoning California in such a way that it could not be reached.
Clark said to Times, “Nobody could find him, and he was sure of the prosecution, and this is illegal. They hid a key witness.” “They used to get Barbara out of how much effort to go with a fake excuse scheme. And this would look very different from the jury.”
The prosecutor experienced a compelling length on Graham’s love letters to Prow.
Barbara Graham looks at a camera during his attempt.
(Herald-Examiner Collection / Los Angeles Public Library)
“And why he was very clear, Clar Clark said. “He damages his character in front of the jury. At that time, there was not much grace for all kinds of homosexual relationships.”
In the closing argument, Leavy said that he testified to the jury members in order to seduce Graham’s male jury members and to deterds them from their duties to condemn them with the hope that he might go out there and look beautiful ”. It was a tactic that Clark found “morally disgusting”.
“The law was different then and [they did] Today, there will be many things for export. ”
Susan Hayward, in 1958, “I want to live!” He won a sympathetic but Oscar for Campy Graham’s depiction. Graham is punished for challenging the contracts of time. Sexually adventurous. He smokes with men in dark rooms. He cleverly enters the torture cops. He’s a Wildcat with a sensitive heart.
He declared a copy of the advertising and declared that “Jazzed-up was the most wild of the generation,” he declared. “Many of them are bad. Many of them were bad. Thousands of Arzu, a few good. Sin. He stole. But he swore he never killed.”
John True, the second from the right, witnessed the common defendants for the trial of the murder of Barbara Graham and Mabel Monahan.
(Los Angeles Times)
Although Graham rejects the victim’s house, Clark believes him dead There – but as a trap. It was unlikely that 3 Graham, a 5 -meter -meter company of the four stronger male criminal partners, some of whom were violent records, would be Bludgeoner.
Under the guilty murder rule, Graham would be guilty of any participation in crime, but in a case of a different way, he may have avoided death penalty.
The jury members convicted Graham, Santo and Perkins from the murder, and a judge condemned them all to their death. One of Graham’s last requests in San Quentin was to wear a mask on his way to the gas room. Orum I don’t want to see people, ”he said.
Leavy was one of the witnesses of his execution, his legend was about to get another notch.
There was also a Times columnist, and there was also a journalist Al Martinez, who wrote about being perili because the cyanide pellets fell after decades and the gas rises.
The police next to him, “Mabel Monahan is very dead.” He said.
