THE MURDER OF “BUTTERFLY” VERA STONE, 25, IN LOS ANGELES ON APRIL 4, 1924.
(Do not quote without attribution to Alvin Esau)
Did Earle Nelson murder call girls before he embarked on killing landladies in 1925? “Butterflies” was an expression used in the jazz age for women who did most of their sleeping in the daytime and had relationships with numerous men and “sugar daddies.”[1] For example, Mrs. Ruby Reed, a “gin and jazz” beauty[2] was found strangled in her apartment in Los Angeles on March 26, 1920.[3] Reed had been dead for several days; her body discovered under some clothes, and she had been strangled to death with some of her underwear wrapped around her throat and a handkerchief stuffed in her mouth. There were also love letters that had been torn up, and the apartment was in disarray from her struggle with her assailant.[4] Ruby Reed had many lovers, several of whom were arrested, but the police were unable to prove the guilt of any of them, and the case went into the unsolved file.[5] While Ruby Reed was likely strangled by a jealous lover, it was also reported that she had acted as a decoy for an underworld gang and she may have been murdered in the belief that she had failed in her task.[6] There seems no need to drag Earle Nelson into the case given the numbers of available suspects, as well as the underworld connections of the victim. We also doubt that Nelson started killing at this early date.
However, by 1924, which is after Nelson’s final escape from the asylum, we must take more seriously the possibility that he killed call girls before he killed landladies. A short note, tucked away in the back pages of the Los Angeles Times in February 1924, indicated that four young police officers at the Wilmington Police Station had allegedly held an all-night party at the station house, which included the serving of liquor.[7] Apparently this affair came to the attention of higher police authorities because two women who had been at the party reported that money had been stolen from them while at the party. One of the women who made the claim was a Miss Vera Stone, age 25. The four officers, of course, denied the theft, but were now subject to some kind of disciplinary hearing as to the holding of the party.[8]
Vera Stone, (assuming that this was the same person, as mentioned above) was strangled to death in her apartment at 1330 West 11th Street in Los Angeles on the Friday night of April 4, 1924. Her body was discovered the following night by her sister, Miss Pearl Dunbar. Pearl noticed that the bedroom door in the apartment was locked, but the key was on the floor in the hall, and when she unlocked the door, she found her dead sister on the bedroom floor just behind the locked door. Stone had been wearing a black silk dress. The Los Angeles Times provided very little detail as to the murder scene.[9] Apparently there were deep wounds on the “slender” neck and wounds to the head. The coroner later stated that death had been caused by strangulation, and not by the blow to the head.[10] It was implied that a strong man had simply used his hands to strangle her, although one may doubt this, given that a silk garment covered in blood was found, half in the dresser bureau and the other half hidden in the bathroom.[11] A United Press story in the Oakland Tribune stated:
From discoveries today, it is believed Mrs. Stone was strangled to death with a towel, then beaten over the head with a hammer, police say. The dead woman’s skull was crushed in by the instrument and her throat cut and scratched. A water-soaked towel with a knot tied in it was found near the body… Mrs. Stone’s clothing was partially torn from her body, police discovered, while a string of pearls had been broken and scattered over the room.[12]
The police believed that the killer had visited the apartment around 8 or 8:30 on the Friday evening. Miss Griffith, living in an apartment directly below the Stone apartment said that at about 9 in the evening she heard a woman scream and then heard a scuffle and a terrific crash, so severe that her ceiling shook. She went downstairs and fetched the landlady, Mrs. Loan, who went to the Stone apartment and knocked on the door and called for “Miss Lynn” but received no answer. Mrs. Loan explained that Vera had a special lock to which the landlady had no key to enter. Not hearing any further noises, Griffith and Loan, let matters stand.[13]
The surviving police report on the Stone murder is more unforgiving as to the actions of the landlady. It states, "At about 9:30 p.m. the landlady at said address heard Mrs. Stone cry out, “My God, Bill, you’re killing me,” but the landlady did not take the trouble to investigate. Four diamond rings and coin purse of Mrs. Stone were stolen by the murderer."[14]
In a little side story, the Times gave a moralistic account of the life of Vera Stone. A young police officer, Bill Stone, had met the very young Vera working in some cabaret. He “rescued” her, and they were married in 1921 and Vera settled into a life of fidelity to her beloved husband, the only man whom she ever loved. Unfortunately, Bill Stone died tragically of a stomach disease in early 1922. After a period of mourning, Vera eventually reappeared as “Mae Lynn” to a “life of empty laughter and tinsel and aimless days.”[15] But she always kept the picture of Bill Stone on her dressing room bureau.
While some reports simply noted that Vera Stone was a twice married “hairdresser by profession,”[16] the Los Angeles Times account implied that Vera Stone, using the name “Mae Lynn,” was a call girl. “Many men called on her,” said the newspaper,[17] and the following day, it was reported that the police had found various notebooks in Stone’s apartment, amounting to a list of over 300 men, as well as personal cards with the names of taxi-cab drivers.[18] The most important initial half dozen or so men to be investigated included an unnamed former husband (even before the late Bill Stone); a “Bill Lester” who had apparently tried to force his way into the apartment on previous occasions; a “Jack” who had apparently had a violent quarrel with Stone; a “Bill” who had sent a postcard from Virginia a month before the murder and stated that, “I will come to see you in a month.” The list continued with a nervous man who was seen standing in front of Stone’s door the day previous to the murder, a man who sent flowers on the day of the murder, and finally a man who apparently wanted to marry Stone but only if she left her way of life, allegedly saying, “I would rather see her dead than leading the kind of life she led.”[19] Obviously the report that the victim had cried out to a “Bill” put some suspects higher on the list.
One police theory was that Vera had not been killed by some man, but rather by a jealous woman rival for some man’s love.[20] Complicating the investigation was the fact that Vera Stone, widow of a police officer, apparently had some surviving relationships within the force. As reported in the San Francisco Chronicle, “It was learned tonight that Chief of Detectives George Home, in charge of the investigation, had instigated a vigorous investigation of the relations of two well known police detectives with the woman.”[21]
However, the investigation of all these individuals, (but for the missing “Bill Lester”) followed by the investigation of the rest of the more than 300 names of men found in Vera Stone’s notebooks, did not produce evidence of the killer. The police held out some hope that maybe “Pasadena Jack” was responsible. They linked the name to a disabled war veteran who admitted to a relationship with Vera Stone, even attending her funeral, but he proved to have an iron-clad alibi which checked out.[22]
Several weeks after the murder, a journalist by the name of Jack Jungmeyer wrote a wire story carried in various newspapers.[23] Accompanied by a large photo of Vera Stone, Jungmeyer, writing in a sensationalist style, suggested that “the man who loved her best” was also the man who sent her a pot of resurrection lilies that were delivered anonymously from a public stand the day before her death. It was this man who would rather see her dead than lead the life she was living who had likely done the deed, according to Jungmeyer. According to another journalist, writing years later, but with apparent access to the police file, the prime suspect was indeed a man who had purchased a lily the day before the murder and had the lily delivered to Vera Stone.[24] The man was described by the florist as about 40 years old, stocky, and well dressed. The age does not fit Earle Nelson who was around 27 years old at this point, but Nelson could presumably be mistaken for someone older. In any case, the lily was found at the scene of the crime with the card ripped off. The police considered the lily as a symbol of death and suspected that “Bill Lester” had sent it, and then murdered Vera, but this man was never identified. No one knew who “Bill Lester” was.
Many months later there was a brief mention of a man who had allegedly been shot by a woman after he had attempted to attack and strangle her. The police asked the sister of Vera Stone, Miss Pearl Dunbar, to go to the hospital and look at the man, who was close to death, to see if the sister might recognize the man as one of Vera Stone’s “friends.”[25] Nothing came of this. It appears that the police were never able to find the murderer of Mrs. Stone. The last entry in the official police record states that two men, one with the name of William, were arrested as late as January 23, 1928, but were released several days later because the police were unable to connect them with the murder.[26]
Vera Stone had both friends in the police force and many friends who were “underworld denizens.”[27] Like Ruby Reed in 1920, Vera Stone in 1924 was probably murdered by a jealous lover, but also like Ruby Reed, having underworld connections, she was very likely not the random victim of a fiend strangler like Nelson, but rather she was more likely murdered by an underworld figure under the theory that she was an informant to the police.[28] It was reported that one detective concluded, “that she knew too much.”[29] However, as in the other cases that we have looked at, but not included in the book, we are left with some suspicion that Earle Nelson might have been involved. Given the many aliases he used, perhaps he was the "Bill Lester" who was never found.
...............................................................................
[1] Jack Carberry, “Phantom Slayer of Cabaret Butterfly Tantalizes Police,” L. A. Express, Jan. 23, 1930, at 1 and 8.
[2] Jack Carberry, “Gin and Jazz Girl’s Mystery Strangling Still Balks Police,” L. A. Express, Jan. 28, 1930, at 1.
[3] “Find Woman Strangled with her own Chemise,” L. A. Times, March 27, 1920, at 1; “Suspect Held in Strangling Mystery,” L. A. Express, March 27, 1920, at 1.
[4] “Slaying of Pretty Divorcee,” Santa Ana Register, March 27, 1920, at 1.
[5] “Strands of Hair May Hang Women’s Slayer,” L. A. Times, March 28, 1920, at 1; “Seek New Data,” L. A. Times, March 30, 1920; “Police Puzzled by Strange Slaying as Suspects Released,” L. A. Express, March 30, 1920, at 1.
[6] ‘Meade Released on Bail,” Salt Lake Tribune, September 6, 1920, at 18; “Alleged Swindler Is Placed Under Arrest,” Ogden Standard Examiner, Sept. 6, 1920, at 4.
[7] “Shift Two of Police at Party,” L.A. Times, Feb. 14, 1924, at 22.
[8] “Board Will Hear Police Rum Charge,” L.A. Times, Feb. 15, 1924, at 15.
[9] “Trio Sought in Stone Murder,” L.A. Times, April 6, 1924, at 3.
[10] “Stone Death is Laid to Choking,” L.A. Times, April 9, at 13.
[11] Supra note 3.
[12] “L.A. Woman Found Slain by Hammer,” Oakland Tribune, April 5, 1924, at 1.
[13] Supra note 3.
[14] Los Angeles Police Homicide Index Records, April 4, 1925. Provided to Author by LAPD.
[15] “Vera’s Secret Well Kept,” L.A. Times, April 6, 1924, at 3.
[16] Supra note 6.
[17] Supra note 3.
[18] “Seek Widow’s Real Lover,” L.A. Times, April 7, 1924, at 1.
[19] Ibid. Also, supra note 3.
[20] Supra note 6.
[21] “State Search on For Killer of L.A. Woman,” San Francisco Chronicle, April 6, 1924, at 11.
[22] “Arrested in Murder Case,” L.A. Times, April 14, 1924, Pt. II at 1; “Collis Freed as Suspect,” L.A. Times, April 15, 1924, at 5; “Note is Stone Case Clew,” L.A. Times, April 8, 1924, at 10.
[23] Jack Jungmeyer, “Sends Lilies, Then Murders Widow He Could Not Guide,” Alton Evening Telegram, April 18, 1924, at 1.
[24] Jack Carberry, supra note one.
[25] “Stone Murder Quiz Revived,” L.A. Times, Oct. 8, 1924, at 10; “Woman Held in Mantell Case,” Oct. 9, 1924, at 11.
[26] Los Angeles Police Homicide Records, April 4, 1925. Provided to Author by LAPD.
[27] “Two Sought,” Madison Journal, April 6, 1924, at 1; “Mystery in L.A. Murder,” Oakland Post-Enquirer, April 7, 1924, at 1 and 5.
[28] Another theory advanced by Jack Jungmeyer, “Vera Stone,” Salt Lake Telegram, April 23, 1924, at 3.
[29] John Arrington, “Mystery Murders of L. A.,” L. A. Post-Record, May 9, 1925, at 2.
(Do not quote without attribution to Alvin Esau)
Did Earle Nelson murder call girls before he embarked on killing landladies in 1925? “Butterflies” was an expression used in the jazz age for women who did most of their sleeping in the daytime and had relationships with numerous men and “sugar daddies.”[1] For example, Mrs. Ruby Reed, a “gin and jazz” beauty[2] was found strangled in her apartment in Los Angeles on March 26, 1920.[3] Reed had been dead for several days; her body discovered under some clothes, and she had been strangled to death with some of her underwear wrapped around her throat and a handkerchief stuffed in her mouth. There were also love letters that had been torn up, and the apartment was in disarray from her struggle with her assailant.[4] Ruby Reed had many lovers, several of whom were arrested, but the police were unable to prove the guilt of any of them, and the case went into the unsolved file.[5] While Ruby Reed was likely strangled by a jealous lover, it was also reported that she had acted as a decoy for an underworld gang and she may have been murdered in the belief that she had failed in her task.[6] There seems no need to drag Earle Nelson into the case given the numbers of available suspects, as well as the underworld connections of the victim. We also doubt that Nelson started killing at this early date.
However, by 1924, which is after Nelson’s final escape from the asylum, we must take more seriously the possibility that he killed call girls before he killed landladies. A short note, tucked away in the back pages of the Los Angeles Times in February 1924, indicated that four young police officers at the Wilmington Police Station had allegedly held an all-night party at the station house, which included the serving of liquor.[7] Apparently this affair came to the attention of higher police authorities because two women who had been at the party reported that money had been stolen from them while at the party. One of the women who made the claim was a Miss Vera Stone, age 25. The four officers, of course, denied the theft, but were now subject to some kind of disciplinary hearing as to the holding of the party.[8]
Vera Stone, (assuming that this was the same person, as mentioned above) was strangled to death in her apartment at 1330 West 11th Street in Los Angeles on the Friday night of April 4, 1924. Her body was discovered the following night by her sister, Miss Pearl Dunbar. Pearl noticed that the bedroom door in the apartment was locked, but the key was on the floor in the hall, and when she unlocked the door, she found her dead sister on the bedroom floor just behind the locked door. Stone had been wearing a black silk dress. The Los Angeles Times provided very little detail as to the murder scene.[9] Apparently there were deep wounds on the “slender” neck and wounds to the head. The coroner later stated that death had been caused by strangulation, and not by the blow to the head.[10] It was implied that a strong man had simply used his hands to strangle her, although one may doubt this, given that a silk garment covered in blood was found, half in the dresser bureau and the other half hidden in the bathroom.[11] A United Press story in the Oakland Tribune stated:
From discoveries today, it is believed Mrs. Stone was strangled to death with a towel, then beaten over the head with a hammer, police say. The dead woman’s skull was crushed in by the instrument and her throat cut and scratched. A water-soaked towel with a knot tied in it was found near the body… Mrs. Stone’s clothing was partially torn from her body, police discovered, while a string of pearls had been broken and scattered over the room.[12]
The police believed that the killer had visited the apartment around 8 or 8:30 on the Friday evening. Miss Griffith, living in an apartment directly below the Stone apartment said that at about 9 in the evening she heard a woman scream and then heard a scuffle and a terrific crash, so severe that her ceiling shook. She went downstairs and fetched the landlady, Mrs. Loan, who went to the Stone apartment and knocked on the door and called for “Miss Lynn” but received no answer. Mrs. Loan explained that Vera had a special lock to which the landlady had no key to enter. Not hearing any further noises, Griffith and Loan, let matters stand.[13]
The surviving police report on the Stone murder is more unforgiving as to the actions of the landlady. It states, "At about 9:30 p.m. the landlady at said address heard Mrs. Stone cry out, “My God, Bill, you’re killing me,” but the landlady did not take the trouble to investigate. Four diamond rings and coin purse of Mrs. Stone were stolen by the murderer."[14]
In a little side story, the Times gave a moralistic account of the life of Vera Stone. A young police officer, Bill Stone, had met the very young Vera working in some cabaret. He “rescued” her, and they were married in 1921 and Vera settled into a life of fidelity to her beloved husband, the only man whom she ever loved. Unfortunately, Bill Stone died tragically of a stomach disease in early 1922. After a period of mourning, Vera eventually reappeared as “Mae Lynn” to a “life of empty laughter and tinsel and aimless days.”[15] But she always kept the picture of Bill Stone on her dressing room bureau.
While some reports simply noted that Vera Stone was a twice married “hairdresser by profession,”[16] the Los Angeles Times account implied that Vera Stone, using the name “Mae Lynn,” was a call girl. “Many men called on her,” said the newspaper,[17] and the following day, it was reported that the police had found various notebooks in Stone’s apartment, amounting to a list of over 300 men, as well as personal cards with the names of taxi-cab drivers.[18] The most important initial half dozen or so men to be investigated included an unnamed former husband (even before the late Bill Stone); a “Bill Lester” who had apparently tried to force his way into the apartment on previous occasions; a “Jack” who had apparently had a violent quarrel with Stone; a “Bill” who had sent a postcard from Virginia a month before the murder and stated that, “I will come to see you in a month.” The list continued with a nervous man who was seen standing in front of Stone’s door the day previous to the murder, a man who sent flowers on the day of the murder, and finally a man who apparently wanted to marry Stone but only if she left her way of life, allegedly saying, “I would rather see her dead than leading the kind of life she led.”[19] Obviously the report that the victim had cried out to a “Bill” put some suspects higher on the list.
One police theory was that Vera had not been killed by some man, but rather by a jealous woman rival for some man’s love.[20] Complicating the investigation was the fact that Vera Stone, widow of a police officer, apparently had some surviving relationships within the force. As reported in the San Francisco Chronicle, “It was learned tonight that Chief of Detectives George Home, in charge of the investigation, had instigated a vigorous investigation of the relations of two well known police detectives with the woman.”[21]
However, the investigation of all these individuals, (but for the missing “Bill Lester”) followed by the investigation of the rest of the more than 300 names of men found in Vera Stone’s notebooks, did not produce evidence of the killer. The police held out some hope that maybe “Pasadena Jack” was responsible. They linked the name to a disabled war veteran who admitted to a relationship with Vera Stone, even attending her funeral, but he proved to have an iron-clad alibi which checked out.[22]
Several weeks after the murder, a journalist by the name of Jack Jungmeyer wrote a wire story carried in various newspapers.[23] Accompanied by a large photo of Vera Stone, Jungmeyer, writing in a sensationalist style, suggested that “the man who loved her best” was also the man who sent her a pot of resurrection lilies that were delivered anonymously from a public stand the day before her death. It was this man who would rather see her dead than lead the life she was living who had likely done the deed, according to Jungmeyer. According to another journalist, writing years later, but with apparent access to the police file, the prime suspect was indeed a man who had purchased a lily the day before the murder and had the lily delivered to Vera Stone.[24] The man was described by the florist as about 40 years old, stocky, and well dressed. The age does not fit Earle Nelson who was around 27 years old at this point, but Nelson could presumably be mistaken for someone older. In any case, the lily was found at the scene of the crime with the card ripped off. The police considered the lily as a symbol of death and suspected that “Bill Lester” had sent it, and then murdered Vera, but this man was never identified. No one knew who “Bill Lester” was.
Many months later there was a brief mention of a man who had allegedly been shot by a woman after he had attempted to attack and strangle her. The police asked the sister of Vera Stone, Miss Pearl Dunbar, to go to the hospital and look at the man, who was close to death, to see if the sister might recognize the man as one of Vera Stone’s “friends.”[25] Nothing came of this. It appears that the police were never able to find the murderer of Mrs. Stone. The last entry in the official police record states that two men, one with the name of William, were arrested as late as January 23, 1928, but were released several days later because the police were unable to connect them with the murder.[26]
Vera Stone had both friends in the police force and many friends who were “underworld denizens.”[27] Like Ruby Reed in 1920, Vera Stone in 1924 was probably murdered by a jealous lover, but also like Ruby Reed, having underworld connections, she was very likely not the random victim of a fiend strangler like Nelson, but rather she was more likely murdered by an underworld figure under the theory that she was an informant to the police.[28] It was reported that one detective concluded, “that she knew too much.”[29] However, as in the other cases that we have looked at, but not included in the book, we are left with some suspicion that Earle Nelson might have been involved. Given the many aliases he used, perhaps he was the "Bill Lester" who was never found.
...............................................................................
[1] Jack Carberry, “Phantom Slayer of Cabaret Butterfly Tantalizes Police,” L. A. Express, Jan. 23, 1930, at 1 and 8.
[2] Jack Carberry, “Gin and Jazz Girl’s Mystery Strangling Still Balks Police,” L. A. Express, Jan. 28, 1930, at 1.
[3] “Find Woman Strangled with her own Chemise,” L. A. Times, March 27, 1920, at 1; “Suspect Held in Strangling Mystery,” L. A. Express, March 27, 1920, at 1.
[4] “Slaying of Pretty Divorcee,” Santa Ana Register, March 27, 1920, at 1.
[5] “Strands of Hair May Hang Women’s Slayer,” L. A. Times, March 28, 1920, at 1; “Seek New Data,” L. A. Times, March 30, 1920; “Police Puzzled by Strange Slaying as Suspects Released,” L. A. Express, March 30, 1920, at 1.
[6] ‘Meade Released on Bail,” Salt Lake Tribune, September 6, 1920, at 18; “Alleged Swindler Is Placed Under Arrest,” Ogden Standard Examiner, Sept. 6, 1920, at 4.
[7] “Shift Two of Police at Party,” L.A. Times, Feb. 14, 1924, at 22.
[8] “Board Will Hear Police Rum Charge,” L.A. Times, Feb. 15, 1924, at 15.
[9] “Trio Sought in Stone Murder,” L.A. Times, April 6, 1924, at 3.
[10] “Stone Death is Laid to Choking,” L.A. Times, April 9, at 13.
[11] Supra note 3.
[12] “L.A. Woman Found Slain by Hammer,” Oakland Tribune, April 5, 1924, at 1.
[13] Supra note 3.
[14] Los Angeles Police Homicide Index Records, April 4, 1925. Provided to Author by LAPD.
[15] “Vera’s Secret Well Kept,” L.A. Times, April 6, 1924, at 3.
[16] Supra note 6.
[17] Supra note 3.
[18] “Seek Widow’s Real Lover,” L.A. Times, April 7, 1924, at 1.
[19] Ibid. Also, supra note 3.
[20] Supra note 6.
[21] “State Search on For Killer of L.A. Woman,” San Francisco Chronicle, April 6, 1924, at 11.
[22] “Arrested in Murder Case,” L.A. Times, April 14, 1924, Pt. II at 1; “Collis Freed as Suspect,” L.A. Times, April 15, 1924, at 5; “Note is Stone Case Clew,” L.A. Times, April 8, 1924, at 10.
[23] Jack Jungmeyer, “Sends Lilies, Then Murders Widow He Could Not Guide,” Alton Evening Telegram, April 18, 1924, at 1.
[24] Jack Carberry, supra note one.
[25] “Stone Murder Quiz Revived,” L.A. Times, Oct. 8, 1924, at 10; “Woman Held in Mantell Case,” Oct. 9, 1924, at 11.
[26] Los Angeles Police Homicide Records, April 4, 1925. Provided to Author by LAPD.
[27] “Two Sought,” Madison Journal, April 6, 1924, at 1; “Mystery in L.A. Murder,” Oakland Post-Enquirer, April 7, 1924, at 1 and 5.
[28] Another theory advanced by Jack Jungmeyer, “Vera Stone,” Salt Lake Telegram, April 23, 1924, at 3.
[29] John Arrington, “Mystery Murders of L. A.,” L. A. Post-Record, May 9, 1925, at 2.
