January 25, 2021 • 37 mins
While the Griffith name today is associated with the Los Angeles park and the observatory, during his time, G.J. Griffith was associated with other things: real estate, social climbing, and a horrifying domestic abuse scandal.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Chasey V. Wilson. So if
you have spent time in Los Angeles, or have you
even read about the city or heard about it in passing,
(00:21):
you have probably heard of Griffith Park. Uh. That is
a huge space. It's forty undred acres, incredibly large from
municipal park in a city. For comparisons, Central Park in
Manhattan is eight hundred forty two point six acres, and
more than three thousand of those acres were donated all
at once for the founding of the park by a
(00:43):
single man named Griffith J. Griffith. That name in and
of itself makes me gel a little there, you haven't um.
There is a huge statue of Griffith at the park's entrance.
And while his name today is associated with the park
and the observatory, during his time he was associated with
some other things, real estate, social climbing, and a scandal
(01:04):
that occupied columns and columns of newspapers around the country.
Heads Up, this episode is going to talk quite a bit,
particularly in the back half, about a pretty horrifying instance
of domestic violence UH and the court cases associated with
it as well as the act itself, So just know
(01:25):
that that's in this episode. Griffith Jenkins. Griffith was born
on January fourth, eighteen fifty in South Wales, and we
don't really know a lot about his early years. We
do know that the Griffith family was very poor. They
had a subsistence farm and Griffith's father also took mining
work to make ends meet. When he was still just
(01:47):
a teenager, Griffith, who was the oldest child in the family,
traveled to the United States with his uncle in eighteen
sixty five. Griffith attended school in Pennsylvania, and after his
education was complete, he started working as a reporter. In
the eighteen seventies, Griffith traveled to the West Coast, making
his way to San Francisco, California, to report on the
(02:07):
mining industry there. Through his work covering mining interests, he
started to be seen as really an expert on the subject,
and this led to additional income as he started working
as a consultant. He offered his knowledge of the industry
as a whole, as well as specific information about various
operations to heads of different companies. He also started his
(02:29):
own mining ventures, making decisions based on his wealth of knowledge,
which turned to actual wealth pretty quickly as these operations
were successful. Yeah, there's actually us a lot of variation
in the stories of how he made his money. Some
will suggest that he made it all consulting, but really
he didn't make as much as he claimed. Others say
(02:50):
he had these side mining things going on. But basically,
by the time he moved to Los Angeles in eighteen
eighty two, he did have a pretty significant nesting with
him that he had amassed, and he used that money
to establish a reputation as a powerful businessman because he
primarily used that money to invest in land in the city.
(03:10):
At the end of two Griffith purchased Rancho Los Feliz
and yes we know that Angelino say lost. Plus he
bought this from a man named Thomas Bell. The land
had been owned by a woman named Maria Ignacia Feliz,
who and had inherited the ranch after her husband died.
She later remarried, taking the last name Verdugo, and at
(03:33):
that point Spain was still in control of the region,
having seized the land from indigenous Gabrielino Tongva people's. The
Felize family eventually lost control of the property and it
changed hands several times before this purchase when Griffith acquired it,
and by the time G. J. Griffith purchased Rancho Los Felize,
it had a reputation as a cursed property, but he
(03:56):
did not seem to mind. The large tract of land
that he bought that made up the Rancho property included
what they now called Los Felis, Silver Lake and a
section of the Santa Monica Mountains. Griffiths saw his property
acquisition as the beginning of an entirely new venture. He
truly intended to build a ranching business there. He imported livestock,
(04:20):
thousands of sheep, a hundred and fifty cows and fifty horses.
He built a railway around this huge property, and he
also started an Ostrich farm. Yeah, he had a business
partner in that Ostrich farm. But one of the reasons
that he was buying this ranch land, setting up infrastructure
and kind of developing it as as this little oasis
(04:42):
just outside the city was that he was making a
lot of money in the land boom, and he was
actually selling off lots as neighborhoods from the southern portion
of the land, so he could claim that he already
had like some infrastructure and some business going there, and
wouldn't you want to live here? At that time, Griffith's
ranch was outside the Los Angeles city limits, but he
(05:02):
definitely inserted himself right into the middle of the city
social scene. People saw him as a climber and an interloper,
and he was referred to by a number of unflattering
nicknames and descriptions, the tamest of which might be quote
a roly poly, pompous little fellow. But Griffith was intent
(05:24):
on becoming a prominent citizen of his new hometown, and
one way that he saw to do this was through
civic minded acts. So, for example, he sold the City
of Los Angeles water rights along the l A River
at a very discounted price, and this was a really
vital step in the city's developing infrastructure. He probably could
have set a price that gouged the municipal budget because
(05:46):
they really really needed access to that water, But through
some combination of genuine desire to do good and also
hopes that his generosity would be recognized and gained him
some clout, Griffith went ahead and sold it at a
financial loss. Griffith also knew the value that a well
made marriage match could have on his reputation. Enter Louis
(06:09):
Mesmer and his lovely daughters. Mesmer was quote a pioneer
resident and one of the best noon citizens of Los Angeles. Mesmer,
who had been born in France, was an industrious man
who had worked as a baker and a minor, and
ultimately settled in Los Angeles in eighteen fifty nine, the
population was a mere three thousand, five hundred. He started
(06:32):
built and sold a number of businesses in the city,
and laid some of the first cement sidewalk in l
A on the edge of one of his properties. By
the time Griffith arrived in l A, Mesmer was a
well established, well respected businessman who had acquired significant wealth. Additionally,
Mesmer's two daughters, Lucille and Christina, were named as inheritors
(06:56):
of a huge fortune from a family friend who was
Andre Ris Walter. Naturally, Griffiths went right for the first
family of Los Angeles at the time and started a
courtship with Christina Mesmer, whose full name was Mary Agnes
Christina Messmer, although she went by either Christina or Autentina.
The two were married on January seven, and their wedding
(07:19):
was covered in the papers as a quote union of
two very wealthy Los Angeles families. But right out of
the gate, even before the wedding, there were issues between
Griffith and the Mesmer family over money. After the invitations
had already been mailed out, Griffith insisted that Christina sign
over her rights to her inheritance to him. He initially
(07:43):
thought she was inheriting all of Ris Walter's landholdings and
was reportedly really angry when he found out that she
was to split that real estate inheritance with her sister Lucy.
That was when he insisted that he gained control of
the inheritance, and this put Tina in a really terrible spot.
She didn't want to call off the wedding, and while
she acquiesced to his request, her siblings in particular found
(08:05):
this whole thing really distasteful. They never really trusted Griffith
after that. Griffith and Tina had a son the year
after they married. They named him Van Dell. That was
their only child, and Griffith also adopted a number of
rather pretentious characteristics during his ascension among the Los Angeles elite.
So he started walking with a cane that he did
(08:27):
not need, presumably because he thought it made him look distinguished.
He wore very expensive, lamboyant clothes, and he started to
refer to himself by the title of colonel, even though
he had no military career to speak of. But people
accepted and started calling him Colonel Griffith. Historians have speculated
that this was likely Griffith kind of overcompensating for a
(08:49):
childhood of poverty, but for a lot of old money Angelinos,
they just saw this all is really ridiculous peacocking. So
as the nineteenth century was drawing to a close, Griffith
chase aimed Los Angeles forever with one grand gesture, and
we'll talk about how Griffith Park was established after we
pause for a quick sponsor break. In December, Griffith gifted
(09:19):
the city of Los Angeles with quite a Christmas surprise,
three thousand, fifteen acres of land from Rancho Los Fellies
to be used exclusively as a park. That land had
not been developed in any way, and Griffiths wanted a
lot of it to stay that way. This was an
extravagant gift, and Griffith's motivations and making it have been
(09:40):
debated over the years. For one, he continued to want
to be seen as successful and important, and this gesture
certainly went a long way in that regard. Additionally, the
donation offered Griffith away to get out of paying taxes
on the land, and the real estate boom was in decline,
so selling off the land in part soles was not
(10:00):
as lucrative as it once was. He did, though, also
seemed to have a fairly genuine interest in civic philanthropy,
and he did want Los Angeles to have a park system.
We have spoken before in the show about how places
like Central Park and the Mall in Washington, d C.
Were inspired in part by people wanting to establish those
cities as cosmopolitan on a level that would match the
(10:23):
cities of Europe and their public spaces, and Griffith, who
had traveled a bit by this point, was similarly influenced
by the grand public spaces he had visited around the
world and on the US East Coast, and that was
part of his desire to donate the park land, and
Griffith's own words quote, I consider it my obligation to
make Los Angeles a happier, cleaner, and finer city. I
(10:46):
wish to pay my debt of duty in this way
to the community in which I have prospered. And the
deed which transferred ownership to the l A City Council
was very specific about the fact that the land was
for a park in a park only. That deed is
actually um part of the l A Archives. They actually
have it framed on the wall. Uh and it includes
(11:09):
the phrase quote to be used as a public park
for purposes of recreation, health, and pleasure, for the use
and benefit of the inhabitants of the said City of
Los Angeles forever. The city council also passed an ordinance
that named the park after Griffith shortly after all of
this began, so it is legally required to be named
Griffith's Park, even though Griffith had given up the land,
(11:32):
though he kept feeling connected to it and retained a
sense of ownership over it, even though he legally had
no claim to it, but in his eyes he believed
he did. There was a clause in the deed that
he turned over to the city that mentioned specifically that
if the city did not maintain the land in a
manner that upheld that mission statement, ownership of the land
(11:55):
would revert back to the Griffith family. And it's possible
that Griffith actually believed this was going to happen. He
certainly frequently wrote letters to the city and the Park
Commission stating that he felt things were not being done
correctly regarding the acreage he had donated. He also served
on the Parks Committee, so he had a little bit
of say in that regard, even if he didn't actually
own the property any longer. Griffith's vision was for the
(12:18):
part to include both the esthetics of the European gardening
tradition with manicured and cultivated spaces, as well as the
significant retention of the natural space, and that was indeed
how the city designed the park. Yeah, if you if
you ever visit Griffith Park, it's really sort of marvelous
because it is a lot of a lot of space
(12:39):
that is in its natural state. And then they had
a zoo at one point. There's like famous marygo around
we'll talk about in the our Friday episode. Um, but yeah,
he managed to set this up and it has retained
that identity that it was always intended to have per
his instructions. So Griffith had at this point kind of
accomplished what set how to do in his bid to
(13:01):
become an important part of the Los Angeles community, and
at least in name, he remains so to this day.
And if he had lived out the rest of his
life peacefully after this, he probably would have a pretty
good and tame legacy in history as a slightly eccentric
but ultimately benevolent philanthropist who made and married a lot
of money and then used it to better his city.
(13:24):
But the next chapter of his life took a very
dark turn. Just as Griffith seemed to have gotten all
that he wanted, he started to drink more heavily, and
this started to impact his mental state as he developed
a lot of paranoid ideas that started to govern his behavior.
And reading through all this, and like the parts that
we're about to get into, like I have thoughts about
(13:46):
like the cause and effect cycle of all of this.
Um An event that happened in September changed to Griffith's
legacy forever. He and Tina went on a summer vacation
into Santa Monica. They stayed at the Arcadia Hotel along
with their sun Van, who was fifteen at the time,
and Griffith behaved strangely during the families stay in Santa Monica.
(14:11):
He had decided that someone was trying to poison him,
and he suspected that it could actually be the Pope.
This concern about the Pope seems to have been rooted
in a very anti Catholic bias that he had, and
it was manifesting in his paranoia. He would insist on
switching the plates at the table settings during the trip
(14:32):
because he believed that they might have poison residue on them. Uh.
It has been estimated that Griffith, at this point in
his life was drinking roughly two quarts of whiskey each day,
that is sixty four ounces, just a little less than
two leaders, so that was also governing some of this
very strange behavior. Griffiths paranoia leads you a horrific series
(14:54):
of events. On September three, and one version of this story,
Tina was sitting at a desk in their hotel room
writing out postcards to friends and family when Griffith entered
the room, but then later testimony indicated that she was
actually packing for their return home. Regardless though of exactly
what Mrs Griffith was doing. The portion of the story
(15:18):
that's corroborated and consistent is that Mr Griffith carried a
revolver and a prayer book, which was Christina's prayer book,
into the room with him. And Griffiths was a Protestant,
but in his desire to move up in Enly society,
he had married a Catholic. Tina was very devout, so
in his mind, Griffith started to link his wife to
(15:41):
his paranoid delusions about the pope and had started to
believe on some level that she was conspiring with the
head of the Catholic Church against her husband. So Griffith
handed Tina the prayer book, told her to swear by
it that she would answer his questions truthfully, instructed her
to get on her knee ease, and then started interrogating her.
(16:03):
He had written his questions down ahead of this conversation,
so he was reading them from a card that he
had prepared, kind of like a script. This was a
menu card from the hotel, and he had written the
questions on the back of it. And while this questioning
was going on. He was also pointing his gun at her.
He asked her if she had been involved in the
death of Andrea brig Walter, that was the family friend
(16:25):
who left Christina and her sister their fortune, saying quote,
did you ever know of brig Walter being poisoned in
your house? Tina answered no. Bridge Walter had died of
blood poisoning, which he had gotten due to an infected
foot injury, and that was something that Christina reminded her
husband of in this moment. Next, Griffith asked his wife
(16:46):
if she was poisoning him by asking, quote, have you
been implicated with or do you know of anyone having
given me poison? Tina, who called Griffith Papa, replied quote,
why Papa, you know I have never harmed a hair
on your head. His third question was whether Tina was
a faithful wife, and she stated that she had never
(17:07):
been untrue. Griffith had an additional question on his card,
but he didn't ask it. He shot Tina after asking
the third. He shot her in the face. The bullet
hit the outer edge of her left eye, shattering the
bone of her eye socket, and it was reported that
upon impact with the bone, the bullet fragmented and a
(17:28):
piece of it pierced her eye, so her left eye
was destroyed, but the bullet didn't penetrate into the brain cavity.
The rest of the bullet fragments passed under the skin
of her temple and lodged under her scalp. Surprisingly, Christina
Griffiths survived this brutal attack. She lost that eye and
had some facial disfigurement, but had been fast enough in
(17:51):
just kind of reflexively jerking her head to one side
that she thwarted Griffith's aims so he did not hit
her square in the forehead, and after asking her husband
why he shot her, she next jumped out of the
window onto the extended roof of the veranda below. And
there are some versions of the story that indicate that
the owners of the hotel saw her and pulled her
(18:12):
into their rooms, but the version that the owners actually
gave the press was that she crawled into an open
window herself. So keep in mind that Tina at this
point had just been shot in the face. She couldn't
see she was bleeding a great deal. She also broke
her shoulder as she jumped out the window. So it
was incredibly lucky that she was able to get to
(18:32):
safety at all. Meanwhile, her husband was still in the hotel.
He had called the hotel staff that there was an accident,
and as a doctor was being called, he phoned Christina's
sister to tell her that her sister had been accidentally shot.
Mrs Griffith was treated at the Arcadia Hotel by a
doctor Crawford that was called by hotel management, and she
(18:55):
stayed there the rest of the night. She was given
an opiate to help her sleep, and then, as sue
as possible, the following morning, she was moved to a
hospital in Los Angeles. She was still unconscious at that point.
The headline that ran on September five in the l
A Times that detailed this incident was quote bullet in
head of Mrs G. J. Griffith. She declares that her
(19:17):
husband shot her. Result may be fatal. Christina Griffith's account
was included in this article, reported as having been told
to her sister in a moment of consciousness, who then
related to the paper. According to that account, when Griffith
entered the room, he said, quote, get your prayer book
and kneel down and cover your eyes. I'm going to
shoot you, and I'm going to kill you. This version
(19:40):
didn't include the information that came to light later on
involving Griffith's aggressive questioning of his wife, because Christina had
not been conscious long enough to give a more thorough account.
Once she was in the l A hospital, Christina Griffith
went into surgery so that the bullet fragments could be
dislodged from her head. Her surgeon R. M. L. Moore
(20:01):
told the paper that while the situation was very serious,
he believed that the patient would recover. So this rite
up stated quote she either jumped or fell from the
window of the room and dropped onto the roof of
a porch on the level of the floor below. So
at this point Griffith was claiming that this whole thing
was an accident, and there was this whole idea that
(20:21):
maybe his wife had just fallen. His account was that
she had been packing a trunk when a revolver that
was either inside of it or that she had been
holding for some reason had accidentally discharged, and he said
that they had not been quarreling at all. In an
interview with a reporter, Griffith said that he and his
wife never quarreled. The reporter, to his credit, did ask
(20:45):
some very pointed questions about why Mrs Griffith would have
had one of Mr Griffith's revolvers in her trunk, how
she would have accidentally made her way out of a
window that was actually in a gable way that was
away from the main part of the room where their
belongings were, and the Griffith was intoxicated at the time
of the incident. Griffith kind of shrugged off the hard questions,
(21:06):
I will say. The reporter at the end of that
says like, do you say this is wholly untrue? And
he's like, oh, yeah, holy um. So Griffith kind of
shrugs off the hard questions and then claimed that in fact,
he had been sober for several weeks. But the Mesber
family was adamant that this was not an accident. Tina's
brother gave a quote to the press that said quote,
(21:26):
Mrs Griffith did not shoot herself. The shooting was not
an accident. In our opinion. We are sure there was
no attempt at suicide. As yet, we make no accusations,
but we believe that the shot was not accidental nor
was it fired with suicidal intent. That statement was given
to a reporter, but before the article actually we went
(21:46):
to press, the Mesmer family contacted the paper again and
they asked to have the following statement added. And it's
kind of if you look at that newspaper, um, it's
kind of in its own call out box to the
side of the article, and that state and his quote,
that would be the consensus of opinion of this meeting.
That judgment be suspended until Mrs Griffith is able to
make a statement, but that a full explanation be demanded
(22:10):
from Mr Griffith, and that a full investigation be made.
The family at this point believed that a conflict stemming
from religious differences was at the heart of this whole matter,
as well as Griffith's drinking to excess. At this point,
Christina was still hospitalized and unconscious, and while her doctor
thought that she would recover, nobody was certain whether she
(22:32):
actually would. The Arcadia's landlords, the Rights, also made a
statement that they believed that this was an accident, and
while the status of the Griffith's teenage son Vandel during
this incident had been a matter of confusion. Initially, people
were like where was Van del and nobody knew. It
was eventually discovered that he had in fact been outside
when it happened. Initially, when asked if his son had
(22:56):
been in the room during the shooting, Griffiths said he
did not know and that he was quote averse to
asking the boy. Griffith had agreed to be taken into custody,
still claiming that it was all an accident, but at
the last minute he slipped away and went for a drink.
This was actually several drinks. He moved from one bar
to another, and a sheriff's deputy trailed him on a
(23:19):
ten mile bar crawl before he was able to catch
up with G. J. Griffith and make the arrest. And
coming up, we're going to talk about how the legal
ramifications of this assault played out. But before we get
into that, let's all take a break and we will
hear from one of the sponsors that keep stuff you
missed in history going. This entire incident and case was
(23:47):
huge news, and for the next several months leading up
to the trial, newspapers across the country reported every development
in the case. This included the fact that Griffith's legal
representation had offered Stina thirty five thousand dollars as a
divorce settlement, which she would only get if she refused
to testify in court against her husband. This was also
(24:09):
a move that was intended to get legal blocks on
Griffith's properties removed so he could sell them if he wished.
That included the property that Christina had inherited in the
Bridge Walter fortune. She did not take this offer, and
as initial hearings had approached, Griffith's defense slowly shifted away
from the story that the shooting was an accident and
instead claimed alcoholic insanity. There were several preliminary hearings and
(24:34):
the actual trial took place in February of nineteen o four.
When Christina Griffith testified, she wore a black veil that
covered her whole face. The newspaper report of her testimony
stated that quote the lawyers made Mrs Griffith get down
from the witness stand and show her sightless eye socket
to each of the jurors, in turn holding up her
(24:55):
veil and dark glasses, while each of the twelve looked
her scars and deformities critically over it was not dramatic
at all, but pitiful and one of the most painful
incidents that ever happened in Judge Smith's court. Christina's time
on the stand was unsurprisingly quite emotional. She told the
court quote, he told me to take my prayer book
and get down on my knees, that he had some
(25:17):
questions to ask me. I begged him to please put
the pistol away. Oh, I begged him to put it away.
I saw that I was in the hands of a
desperate man. So I asked him if I might have
time to pray. He said I might, So I knelt
and raised my eyes and prayed. She describes the questioning
and what happens next, and at the end of her account,
(25:37):
she stated, my only thought was to get out dead
or alive. That was a statement that Griffa's attorney asked
to have stricken from the record. Griffith J. Griffith was
charged with attempted murder. His attorney, Earl Rogers, tried to
discredit Christina in a number of ways and use her
testimony that Griffith had threatened to kill her on several occasions,
(25:59):
as well as the account of fits paranoia, to bolster
his clients in sanity defense. Former California Governor Henry T.
Gage was Christina's attorney, and he had Rogers as well
as the other attorneys present. Were so prone to arguing
with one another that one reporter claimed the judge quote
would be on the point of a journey for the
(26:20):
afternoon to let them fight it out. Yeah, that was
a very um There's a lot of bickering going on.
And Christina had given testimony in several hearings leading up
to the trial at that point. They were always consistent,
and she had said in all of them that she
believed the real reason that Griffith wanted to kill her
was because she had threatened to leave him due to
(26:40):
his drinking, and that he knew that if that happened,
all of his secrets would become public. The fact that
he had this drinking problem was definitely something he had
been hiding. She had told the proprietor of the hotel
when the shooting happened that Griffith must be crazy, and
she also spoke of how he had been paranoid about
poisoning for years and years, and she had kind of
humored him when he did things like wanting to switch
(27:02):
plates with her, and his defense seized on all of
that as evidence that their defense their insanity plea was sound,
and to some degree that approach worked. Griffith was found
guilty not of attempted murder, but of the lesser crime
of assault with a deadly weapon. He was sentenced to
two years in prison and a five thousand dollar fine,
(27:24):
and was incarcerated at San Quentin. And while this was
believed by a lot of people to be a miscarriage
of justice, Mrs Griffith's divorce filing had a better outcome.
The judge granted the request immediately and the whole thing
was handled allegedly within five minutes, some say four and
a half, so on November five, nineteen o four, he
was already incarcerated at this time when they had this hearing.
(27:46):
The San Francisco Examiner ran the story of the proceedings
around the divorce. After stating during testimony that she had
been shot by her husband after he had instructed her
to get on her knees and was allowed to pray,
the judge interrupted and asked if this was deliberate, and
she replied, quote, it was deliberate. He made me get
down on my knees. I asked to pray, and then
(28:06):
the judge asked quote. He then fired Christina. Griffith answered yes, sir,
and Judge Allen's next words were decree granted. As part
of the settlement, it was determined that Christina would retain
custody of their son, Vandel, and that Griffith would pay
for the boy's education. Christina was also awarded sixty five
thousand dollars. After the divorce was settled, she receded from
(28:29):
the public eye and lived out the rest of her
life with her sister Lucy Whipple's family, until her death
in ninety eight at the age of eighty four. When
Griffith finished his two years sentence, he was sober, repentant
and really eager to rehabilitate his image, so after several years,
he once again turned to grand gestures in an effort
(28:50):
to re establish himself as a Los Angeles philanthropist. In
nineteen twelve, Griffith offered the city of Los Angeles a
hundred thousand dollars to be put to we're building an
observatory on Griffith Peak, which is known today as Mount Hollywood.
But while the city council had been willing to take
a huge gift of land from the man that a
(29:10):
lot of people at the time believe to be a
society poser. They were not so keen on taking a
huge sum of money from him having been convicted of
the spelony, even if he had served his sentence. I mean,
the nature of the crime also, I think would be
a deterrent. And keep in mind, like these are very
high level, powerful, wealthy families in the area. So it's
(29:37):
a little bit tricky because the Mesmer family, of course
was very very powerful and wealthy. But Griffith also kind
of in some ways, you know, had had the city
a little bit over a barrel, like he had those
water rights that he had essentially given them. It was
all a little bit weird, but they so they kind
of put him off. It was like, we'll think about it.
(29:58):
And then in a similar move following year nineteen thirteen,
Griffith offered the city fifty thousand dollars. This was to
be put towards building a Greek theater in Griffith Park,
and once again there wasn't exactly a no, but there
wasn't any real movement to accept the offer. They kind
of like went to operations slowdown with it. Griffith was
undoubtedly hurt by this refusal to accept his gifts, but
(30:20):
he still had a vision for these two projects, and
of course today there are a Greek Theater and the
Griffith Observatory. They were built, but that did not happen
until later in nine Griffith died after a prolonged illness
which was reported as liver trouble. His image was still
tarnished in the minds of many of the city's residents,
(30:41):
although the obituary that ran in the l A Times
did not mention the assault, or his conviction or any
of that. It instead recounted his philanthropic works and kind
of left it at that. Upon his death, it was
revealed that Griffith had set up a trust to ensure
that his observatory and the Greek Theater project did forward,
and the city did use the funds from that trust
(31:03):
to carry out construction on both of them. The Greek
Theater was completed in nineteen thirty and the Griffith Observatory
was finished in nineteen thirty five. And now people know
his name, which is probably what he wanted in the
first place. Yeah, done, dune, Dune, do you have some
listener mail to take us out. I do, uh, it's
(31:25):
about me being a dumbhead in our Jean Baptiste dedn'ty episode.
It's from our listener Kate, who writes, Dear Holly and Tracy.
First off, I want to say I absolutely love your podcast.
It is fascinating and well researched, and I know you
both worked hard to uplift marginalized stories. That said, I
think you made a major misstep with today's episode on
Jean Baptis, Denny and the blood transfusion race. I understand
(31:46):
why you chose to include a warning about animal experimentation
at the beginning. However, the fact that you included this
warning and made no mention of the fact that a
human being was abducted and forced to undergo a medical
experiment against his will came across as incredibly classist and frankly,
talkingly devoid of empathy. I don't know you personally, but
I think I've listened to enough of your work to
know this was not your intention. I know you mentioned
(32:07):
having discussions about how graphic to get with various topics
other than animals, but I think you need to consider
not just what you are saying in these warnings, But
what you are saying with these warnings, this warning you
put on the episode prioritize the welfare of animals over
that of a man experiencing homelessness. You basically said, we
expect the harm done to these animals to be more
disturbing than the kidnapping, assault, and eventual murder of Antoine
(32:28):
moray More who I'm sorry, I do not believe you
actually feel that way, but that is how it came across.
As I said, I adore your podcast. I'm sorry this
is what it took to get me to write in.
I've thought about it multiple times for much happier reasons,
but never got around to it. Thank you for the
work you do. I will say this is not this
completely valid criticism. I will say I think part of
it for me is that any time there is an
(32:50):
early stage UM medical development story, I kind of assume
humans are going to be horrible to each other, which
is part of why I that didn't even occur to
me UM. So it's a really good point. I will
just as a correction, he was not homeless, though he
was believed to be. He had a home, he just
didn't tend to go to it. Um, not that that
(33:10):
makes any difference. It's just for clarity, because I don't
want more wad story to become confused. Um. Yeah, I
mean it's it's always tricky and I know. Um. The
other thing I will say is that we get mixed
reactions anytime we issue any kind of warning in the episode.
There are lots of times when people say, why did
you warn us? That ruins the story and it's stupid
(33:32):
and people should just know that history is full of horrors,
and other people who say, I really wish you had
told me this was going to happen. Yeah. A lot
of times. What I'm trying to make that call it,
it's a lot of times when it seems like something
that would not be expected in the course of the episode.
Like if the title of the episode is the such
and such massacre, I'm probably not gonna issue a warning
(33:57):
about there being a lot of violence in the episode. Um.
But if it's a story about a breed of flowers
and there's some kind of like horrific murder, and I'm
probably gonna say something about the murder at the beginning.
Those are made up examples, right, And I mean I
I It's one of those things that I thought about
(34:17):
even with today's episode, right, I knew I wanted to
include that domestic violence warning because it is a horrifying
thing that happened and not something you necessarily expect with
the man for whom Griffith Park is named if you
don't know his back story, But I didn't include, for example,
his alcoholism is like an addiction warning, or the fact
(34:43):
that the violence was specifically gun violence, right, because that
can be right. I mean, that's the thing. It It
gets to be a tricky dance, and I don't always
do it right clearly, um, because there are so many
things that could potentially be troubling to any number of people,
(35:03):
and sometimes it's hard to predict. And also it's probably
just there's part of me that's a jaded and callous
um cynic who's like, of course, humans train each other terribly,
which I try not to let drive the bus, but
sometimes it blinds me. Um. I did also want to
mention though, that we got an email also from our
(35:25):
listener Rebecca, who really really wanted us uh, since we
had been talking about blood transfusion to mention to our
listeners the importance of donating blood. Uh. If you can
donate blood, it does a whole lot of good. Uh.
She says, each whole blood donation can save up to
three lives. If that isn't enough to make you think
about it, if it's something you can do, I know
it's a little tricky during pandemic. So yeah, there's um
(35:50):
the city where I live has been really good about
like telling people when there's a blood drive and how
they can sign up, because they're being really careful about
like how many people can be inside the space and
all that kind of thing. Um. So I think it
can be a little trickier to find a slot to
to do it for that reason. Um, but there's lots
of information available uh in any particular city about uh
(36:15):
where to do it, how to do it. Yeah, I
think you could probably do a blood donation and your
whatever your municipality or location is, and you will find
a wealth of resources. Um. And I encourage people to
do it. It is uh, As Rebecca said, it's a
an incredible gift that you're giving and uh worthwhile, particularly
at a time when a lot in the world is
(36:36):
going wrong. If you can help something go right, that
will probably make you feel better. Uh So, if you
would like to write to us, you can do so
at History podcast at iHeart radio dot com. You can
also find us on social media at missed in History.
Uh If you'd like to subscribe to the show and
you haven't already, well that sounds grand. You can do
that on the iHeart Radio app, at Apple podcast or
wherever it is you listen. Stuff you missed in History
(37:03):
Class is a production of I heart Radio. For more
podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Chasey V. Wilson. So if
you have spent time in Los Angeles, or have you
even read about the city or heard about it in passing,
(00:21):
you have probably heard of Griffith Park. Uh. That is
a huge space. It's forty undred acres, incredibly large from
municipal park in a city. For comparisons, Central Park in
Manhattan is eight hundred forty two point six acres, and
more than three thousand of those acres were donated all
at once for the founding of the park by a
(00:43):
single man named Griffith J. Griffith. That name in and
of itself makes me gel a little there, you haven't um.
There is a huge statue of Griffith at the park's entrance.
And while his name today is associated with the park
and the observatory, during his time he was associated with
some other things, real estate, social climbing, and a scandal
(01:04):
that occupied columns and columns of newspapers around the country.
Heads Up, this episode is going to talk quite a bit,
particularly in the back half, about a pretty horrifying instance
of domestic violence UH and the court cases associated with
it as well as the act itself, So just know
(01:25):
that that's in this episode. Griffith Jenkins. Griffith was born
on January fourth, eighteen fifty in South Wales, and we
don't really know a lot about his early years. We
do know that the Griffith family was very poor. They
had a subsistence farm and Griffith's father also took mining
work to make ends meet. When he was still just
(01:47):
a teenager, Griffith, who was the oldest child in the family,
traveled to the United States with his uncle in eighteen
sixty five. Griffith attended school in Pennsylvania, and after his
education was complete, he started working as a reporter. In
the eighteen seventies, Griffith traveled to the West Coast, making
his way to San Francisco, California, to report on the
(02:07):
mining industry there. Through his work covering mining interests, he
started to be seen as really an expert on the subject,
and this led to additional income as he started working
as a consultant. He offered his knowledge of the industry
as a whole, as well as specific information about various
operations to heads of different companies. He also started his
(02:29):
own mining ventures, making decisions based on his wealth of knowledge,
which turned to actual wealth pretty quickly as these operations
were successful. Yeah, there's actually us a lot of variation
in the stories of how he made his money. Some
will suggest that he made it all consulting, but really
he didn't make as much as he claimed. Others say
(02:50):
he had these side mining things going on. But basically,
by the time he moved to Los Angeles in eighteen
eighty two, he did have a pretty significant nesting with
him that he had amassed, and he used that money
to establish a reputation as a powerful businessman because he
primarily used that money to invest in land in the city.
(03:10):
At the end of two Griffith purchased Rancho Los Feliz
and yes we know that Angelino say lost. Plus he
bought this from a man named Thomas Bell. The land
had been owned by a woman named Maria Ignacia Feliz,
who and had inherited the ranch after her husband died.
She later remarried, taking the last name Verdugo, and at
(03:33):
that point Spain was still in control of the region,
having seized the land from indigenous Gabrielino Tongva people's. The
Felize family eventually lost control of the property and it
changed hands several times before this purchase when Griffith acquired it,
and by the time G. J. Griffith purchased Rancho Los Felize,
it had a reputation as a cursed property, but he
(03:56):
did not seem to mind. The large tract of land
that he bought that made up the Rancho property included
what they now called Los Felis, Silver Lake and a
section of the Santa Monica Mountains. Griffiths saw his property
acquisition as the beginning of an entirely new venture. He
truly intended to build a ranching business there. He imported livestock,
(04:20):
thousands of sheep, a hundred and fifty cows and fifty horses.
He built a railway around this huge property, and he
also started an Ostrich farm. Yeah, he had a business
partner in that Ostrich farm. But one of the reasons
that he was buying this ranch land, setting up infrastructure
and kind of developing it as as this little oasis
(04:42):
just outside the city was that he was making a
lot of money in the land boom, and he was
actually selling off lots as neighborhoods from the southern portion
of the land, so he could claim that he already
had like some infrastructure and some business going there, and
wouldn't you want to live here? At that time, Griffith's
ranch was outside the Los Angeles city limits, but he
(05:02):
definitely inserted himself right into the middle of the city
social scene. People saw him as a climber and an interloper,
and he was referred to by a number of unflattering
nicknames and descriptions, the tamest of which might be quote
a roly poly, pompous little fellow. But Griffith was intent
(05:24):
on becoming a prominent citizen of his new hometown, and
one way that he saw to do this was through
civic minded acts. So, for example, he sold the City
of Los Angeles water rights along the l A River
at a very discounted price, and this was a really
vital step in the city's developing infrastructure. He probably could
have set a price that gouged the municipal budget because
(05:46):
they really really needed access to that water, But through
some combination of genuine desire to do good and also
hopes that his generosity would be recognized and gained him
some clout, Griffith went ahead and sold it at a
financial loss. Griffith also knew the value that a well
made marriage match could have on his reputation. Enter Louis
(06:09):
Mesmer and his lovely daughters. Mesmer was quote a pioneer
resident and one of the best noon citizens of Los Angeles. Mesmer,
who had been born in France, was an industrious man
who had worked as a baker and a minor, and
ultimately settled in Los Angeles in eighteen fifty nine, the
population was a mere three thousand, five hundred. He started
(06:32):
built and sold a number of businesses in the city,
and laid some of the first cement sidewalk in l
A on the edge of one of his properties. By
the time Griffith arrived in l A, Mesmer was a
well established, well respected businessman who had acquired significant wealth. Additionally,
Mesmer's two daughters, Lucille and Christina, were named as inheritors
(06:56):
of a huge fortune from a family friend who was
Andre Ris Walter. Naturally, Griffiths went right for the first
family of Los Angeles at the time and started a
courtship with Christina Mesmer, whose full name was Mary Agnes
Christina Messmer, although she went by either Christina or Autentina.
The two were married on January seven, and their wedding
(07:19):
was covered in the papers as a quote union of
two very wealthy Los Angeles families. But right out of
the gate, even before the wedding, there were issues between
Griffith and the Mesmer family over money. After the invitations
had already been mailed out, Griffith insisted that Christina sign
over her rights to her inheritance to him. He initially
(07:43):
thought she was inheriting all of Ris Walter's landholdings and
was reportedly really angry when he found out that she
was to split that real estate inheritance with her sister Lucy.
That was when he insisted that he gained control of
the inheritance, and this put Tina in a really terrible spot.
She didn't want to call off the wedding, and while
she acquiesced to his request, her siblings in particular found
(08:05):
this whole thing really distasteful. They never really trusted Griffith
after that. Griffith and Tina had a son the year
after they married. They named him Van Dell. That was
their only child, and Griffith also adopted a number of
rather pretentious characteristics during his ascension among the Los Angeles elite.
So he started walking with a cane that he did
(08:27):
not need, presumably because he thought it made him look distinguished.
He wore very expensive, lamboyant clothes, and he started to
refer to himself by the title of colonel, even though
he had no military career to speak of. But people
accepted and started calling him Colonel Griffith. Historians have speculated
that this was likely Griffith kind of overcompensating for a
(08:49):
childhood of poverty, but for a lot of old money Angelinos,
they just saw this all is really ridiculous peacocking. So
as the nineteenth century was drawing to a close, Griffith
chase aimed Los Angeles forever with one grand gesture, and
we'll talk about how Griffith Park was established after we
pause for a quick sponsor break. In December, Griffith gifted
(09:19):
the city of Los Angeles with quite a Christmas surprise,
three thousand, fifteen acres of land from Rancho Los Fellies
to be used exclusively as a park. That land had
not been developed in any way, and Griffiths wanted a
lot of it to stay that way. This was an
extravagant gift, and Griffith's motivations and making it have been
(09:40):
debated over the years. For one, he continued to want
to be seen as successful and important, and this gesture
certainly went a long way in that regard. Additionally, the
donation offered Griffith away to get out of paying taxes
on the land, and the real estate boom was in decline,
so selling off the land in part soles was not
(10:00):
as lucrative as it once was. He did, though, also
seemed to have a fairly genuine interest in civic philanthropy,
and he did want Los Angeles to have a park system.
We have spoken before in the show about how places
like Central Park and the Mall in Washington, d C.
Were inspired in part by people wanting to establish those
cities as cosmopolitan on a level that would match the
(10:23):
cities of Europe and their public spaces, and Griffith, who
had traveled a bit by this point, was similarly influenced
by the grand public spaces he had visited around the
world and on the US East Coast, and that was
part of his desire to donate the park land, and
Griffith's own words quote, I consider it my obligation to
make Los Angeles a happier, cleaner, and finer city. I
(10:46):
wish to pay my debt of duty in this way
to the community in which I have prospered. And the
deed which transferred ownership to the l A City Council
was very specific about the fact that the land was
for a park in a park only. That deed is
actually um part of the l A Archives. They actually
have it framed on the wall. Uh and it includes
(11:09):
the phrase quote to be used as a public park
for purposes of recreation, health, and pleasure, for the use
and benefit of the inhabitants of the said City of
Los Angeles forever. The city council also passed an ordinance
that named the park after Griffith shortly after all of
this began, so it is legally required to be named
Griffith's Park, even though Griffith had given up the land,
(11:32):
though he kept feeling connected to it and retained a
sense of ownership over it, even though he legally had
no claim to it, but in his eyes he believed
he did. There was a clause in the deed that
he turned over to the city that mentioned specifically that
if the city did not maintain the land in a
manner that upheld that mission statement, ownership of the land
(11:55):
would revert back to the Griffith family. And it's possible
that Griffith actually believed this was going to happen. He
certainly frequently wrote letters to the city and the Park
Commission stating that he felt things were not being done
correctly regarding the acreage he had donated. He also served
on the Parks Committee, so he had a little bit
of say in that regard, even if he didn't actually
own the property any longer. Griffith's vision was for the
(12:18):
part to include both the esthetics of the European gardening
tradition with manicured and cultivated spaces, as well as the
significant retention of the natural space, and that was indeed
how the city designed the park. Yeah, if you if
you ever visit Griffith Park, it's really sort of marvelous
because it is a lot of a lot of space
(12:39):
that is in its natural state. And then they had
a zoo at one point. There's like famous marygo around
we'll talk about in the our Friday episode. Um, but yeah,
he managed to set this up and it has retained
that identity that it was always intended to have per
his instructions. So Griffith had at this point kind of
accomplished what set how to do in his bid to
(13:01):
become an important part of the Los Angeles community, and
at least in name, he remains so to this day.
And if he had lived out the rest of his
life peacefully after this, he probably would have a pretty
good and tame legacy in history as a slightly eccentric
but ultimately benevolent philanthropist who made and married a lot
of money and then used it to better his city.
(13:24):
But the next chapter of his life took a very
dark turn. Just as Griffith seemed to have gotten all
that he wanted, he started to drink more heavily, and
this started to impact his mental state as he developed
a lot of paranoid ideas that started to govern his behavior.
And reading through all this, and like the parts that
we're about to get into, like I have thoughts about
(13:46):
like the cause and effect cycle of all of this.
Um An event that happened in September changed to Griffith's
legacy forever. He and Tina went on a summer vacation
into Santa Monica. They stayed at the Arcadia Hotel along
with their sun Van, who was fifteen at the time,
and Griffith behaved strangely during the families stay in Santa Monica.
(14:11):
He had decided that someone was trying to poison him,
and he suspected that it could actually be the Pope.
This concern about the Pope seems to have been rooted
in a very anti Catholic bias that he had, and
it was manifesting in his paranoia. He would insist on
switching the plates at the table settings during the trip
(14:32):
because he believed that they might have poison residue on them. Uh.
It has been estimated that Griffith, at this point in
his life was drinking roughly two quarts of whiskey each day,
that is sixty four ounces, just a little less than
two leaders, so that was also governing some of this
very strange behavior. Griffiths paranoia leads you a horrific series
(14:54):
of events. On September three, and one version of this story,
Tina was sitting at a desk in their hotel room
writing out postcards to friends and family when Griffith entered
the room, but then later testimony indicated that she was
actually packing for their return home. Regardless though of exactly
what Mrs Griffith was doing. The portion of the story
(15:18):
that's corroborated and consistent is that Mr Griffith carried a
revolver and a prayer book, which was Christina's prayer book,
into the room with him. And Griffiths was a Protestant,
but in his desire to move up in Enly society,
he had married a Catholic. Tina was very devout, so
in his mind, Griffith started to link his wife to
(15:41):
his paranoid delusions about the pope and had started to
believe on some level that she was conspiring with the
head of the Catholic Church against her husband. So Griffith
handed Tina the prayer book, told her to swear by
it that she would answer his questions truthfully, instructed her
to get on her knee ease, and then started interrogating her.
(16:03):
He had written his questions down ahead of this conversation,
so he was reading them from a card that he
had prepared, kind of like a script. This was a
menu card from the hotel, and he had written the
questions on the back of it. And while this questioning
was going on. He was also pointing his gun at her.
He asked her if she had been involved in the
death of Andrea brig Walter, that was the family friend
(16:25):
who left Christina and her sister their fortune, saying quote,
did you ever know of brig Walter being poisoned in
your house? Tina answered no. Bridge Walter had died of
blood poisoning, which he had gotten due to an infected
foot injury, and that was something that Christina reminded her
husband of in this moment. Next, Griffith asked his wife
(16:46):
if she was poisoning him by asking, quote, have you
been implicated with or do you know of anyone having
given me poison? Tina, who called Griffith Papa, replied quote,
why Papa, you know I have never harmed a hair
on your head. His third question was whether Tina was
a faithful wife, and she stated that she had never
(17:07):
been untrue. Griffith had an additional question on his card,
but he didn't ask it. He shot Tina after asking
the third. He shot her in the face. The bullet
hit the outer edge of her left eye, shattering the
bone of her eye socket, and it was reported that
upon impact with the bone, the bullet fragmented and a
(17:28):
piece of it pierced her eye, so her left eye
was destroyed, but the bullet didn't penetrate into the brain cavity.
The rest of the bullet fragments passed under the skin
of her temple and lodged under her scalp. Surprisingly, Christina
Griffiths survived this brutal attack. She lost that eye and
had some facial disfigurement, but had been fast enough in
(17:51):
just kind of reflexively jerking her head to one side
that she thwarted Griffith's aims so he did not hit
her square in the forehead, and after asking her husband
why he shot her, she next jumped out of the
window onto the extended roof of the veranda below. And
there are some versions of the story that indicate that
the owners of the hotel saw her and pulled her
(18:12):
into their rooms, but the version that the owners actually
gave the press was that she crawled into an open
window herself. So keep in mind that Tina at this
point had just been shot in the face. She couldn't
see she was bleeding a great deal. She also broke
her shoulder as she jumped out the window. So it
was incredibly lucky that she was able to get to
(18:32):
safety at all. Meanwhile, her husband was still in the hotel.
He had called the hotel staff that there was an accident,
and as a doctor was being called, he phoned Christina's
sister to tell her that her sister had been accidentally shot.
Mrs Griffith was treated at the Arcadia Hotel by a
doctor Crawford that was called by hotel management, and she
(18:55):
stayed there the rest of the night. She was given
an opiate to help her sleep, and then, as sue
as possible, the following morning, she was moved to a
hospital in Los Angeles. She was still unconscious at that point.
The headline that ran on September five in the l
A Times that detailed this incident was quote bullet in
head of Mrs G. J. Griffith. She declares that her
(19:17):
husband shot her. Result may be fatal. Christina Griffith's account
was included in this article, reported as having been told
to her sister in a moment of consciousness, who then
related to the paper. According to that account, when Griffith
entered the room, he said, quote, get your prayer book
and kneel down and cover your eyes. I'm going to
shoot you, and I'm going to kill you. This version
(19:40):
didn't include the information that came to light later on
involving Griffith's aggressive questioning of his wife, because Christina had
not been conscious long enough to give a more thorough account.
Once she was in the l A hospital, Christina Griffith
went into surgery so that the bullet fragments could be
dislodged from her head. Her surgeon R. M. L. Moore
(20:01):
told the paper that while the situation was very serious,
he believed that the patient would recover. So this rite
up stated quote she either jumped or fell from the
window of the room and dropped onto the roof of
a porch on the level of the floor below. So
at this point Griffith was claiming that this whole thing
was an accident, and there was this whole idea that
(20:21):
maybe his wife had just fallen. His account was that
she had been packing a trunk when a revolver that
was either inside of it or that she had been
holding for some reason had accidentally discharged, and he said
that they had not been quarreling at all. In an
interview with a reporter, Griffith said that he and his
wife never quarreled. The reporter, to his credit, did ask
(20:45):
some very pointed questions about why Mrs Griffith would have
had one of Mr Griffith's revolvers in her trunk, how
she would have accidentally made her way out of a
window that was actually in a gable way that was
away from the main part of the room where their
belongings were, and the Griffith was intoxicated at the time
of the incident. Griffith kind of shrugged off the hard questions,
(21:06):
I will say. The reporter at the end of that
says like, do you say this is wholly untrue? And
he's like, oh, yeah, holy um. So Griffith kind of
shrugs off the hard questions and then claimed that in fact,
he had been sober for several weeks. But the Mesber
family was adamant that this was not an accident. Tina's
brother gave a quote to the press that said quote,
(21:26):
Mrs Griffith did not shoot herself. The shooting was not
an accident. In our opinion. We are sure there was
no attempt at suicide. As yet, we make no accusations,
but we believe that the shot was not accidental nor
was it fired with suicidal intent. That statement was given
to a reporter, but before the article actually we went
(21:46):
to press, the Mesmer family contacted the paper again and
they asked to have the following statement added. And it's
kind of if you look at that newspaper, um, it's
kind of in its own call out box to the
side of the article, and that state and his quote,
that would be the consensus of opinion of this meeting.
That judgment be suspended until Mrs Griffith is able to
make a statement, but that a full explanation be demanded
(22:10):
from Mr Griffith, and that a full investigation be made.
The family at this point believed that a conflict stemming
from religious differences was at the heart of this whole matter,
as well as Griffith's drinking to excess. At this point,
Christina was still hospitalized and unconscious, and while her doctor
thought that she would recover, nobody was certain whether she
(22:32):
actually would. The Arcadia's landlords, the Rights, also made a
statement that they believed that this was an accident, and
while the status of the Griffith's teenage son Vandel during
this incident had been a matter of confusion. Initially, people
were like where was Van del and nobody knew. It
was eventually discovered that he had in fact been outside
when it happened. Initially, when asked if his son had
(22:56):
been in the room during the shooting, Griffiths said he
did not know and that he was quote averse to
asking the boy. Griffith had agreed to be taken into custody,
still claiming that it was all an accident, but at
the last minute he slipped away and went for a drink.
This was actually several drinks. He moved from one bar
to another, and a sheriff's deputy trailed him on a
(23:19):
ten mile bar crawl before he was able to catch
up with G. J. Griffith and make the arrest. And
coming up, we're going to talk about how the legal
ramifications of this assault played out. But before we get
into that, let's all take a break and we will
hear from one of the sponsors that keep stuff you
missed in history going. This entire incident and case was
(23:47):
huge news, and for the next several months leading up
to the trial, newspapers across the country reported every development
in the case. This included the fact that Griffith's legal
representation had offered Stina thirty five thousand dollars as a
divorce settlement, which she would only get if she refused
to testify in court against her husband. This was also
(24:09):
a move that was intended to get legal blocks on
Griffith's properties removed so he could sell them if he wished.
That included the property that Christina had inherited in the
Bridge Walter fortune. She did not take this offer, and
as initial hearings had approached, Griffith's defense slowly shifted away
from the story that the shooting was an accident and
instead claimed alcoholic insanity. There were several preliminary hearings and
(24:34):
the actual trial took place in February of nineteen o four.
When Christina Griffith testified, she wore a black veil that
covered her whole face. The newspaper report of her testimony
stated that quote the lawyers made Mrs Griffith get down
from the witness stand and show her sightless eye socket
to each of the jurors, in turn holding up her
(24:55):
veil and dark glasses, while each of the twelve looked
her scars and deformities critically over it was not dramatic
at all, but pitiful and one of the most painful
incidents that ever happened in Judge Smith's court. Christina's time
on the stand was unsurprisingly quite emotional. She told the
court quote, he told me to take my prayer book
and get down on my knees, that he had some
(25:17):
questions to ask me. I begged him to please put
the pistol away. Oh, I begged him to put it away.
I saw that I was in the hands of a
desperate man. So I asked him if I might have
time to pray. He said I might, So I knelt
and raised my eyes and prayed. She describes the questioning
and what happens next, and at the end of her account,
(25:37):
she stated, my only thought was to get out dead
or alive. That was a statement that Griffa's attorney asked
to have stricken from the record. Griffith J. Griffith was
charged with attempted murder. His attorney, Earl Rogers, tried to
discredit Christina in a number of ways and use her
testimony that Griffith had threatened to kill her on several occasions,
(25:59):
as well as the account of fits paranoia, to bolster
his clients in sanity defense. Former California Governor Henry T.
Gage was Christina's attorney, and he had Rogers as well
as the other attorneys present. Were so prone to arguing
with one another that one reporter claimed the judge quote
would be on the point of a journey for the
(26:20):
afternoon to let them fight it out. Yeah, that was
a very um There's a lot of bickering going on.
And Christina had given testimony in several hearings leading up
to the trial at that point. They were always consistent,
and she had said in all of them that she
believed the real reason that Griffith wanted to kill her
was because she had threatened to leave him due to
(26:40):
his drinking, and that he knew that if that happened,
all of his secrets would become public. The fact that
he had this drinking problem was definitely something he had
been hiding. She had told the proprietor of the hotel
when the shooting happened that Griffith must be crazy, and
she also spoke of how he had been paranoid about
poisoning for years and years, and she had kind of
humored him when he did things like wanting to switch
(27:02):
plates with her, and his defense seized on all of
that as evidence that their defense their insanity plea was sound,
and to some degree that approach worked. Griffith was found
guilty not of attempted murder, but of the lesser crime
of assault with a deadly weapon. He was sentenced to
two years in prison and a five thousand dollar fine,
(27:24):
and was incarcerated at San Quentin. And while this was
believed by a lot of people to be a miscarriage
of justice, Mrs Griffith's divorce filing had a better outcome.
The judge granted the request immediately and the whole thing
was handled allegedly within five minutes, some say four and
a half, so on November five, nineteen o four, he
was already incarcerated at this time when they had this hearing.
(27:46):
The San Francisco Examiner ran the story of the proceedings
around the divorce. After stating during testimony that she had
been shot by her husband after he had instructed her
to get on her knees and was allowed to pray,
the judge interrupted and asked if this was deliberate, and
she replied, quote, it was deliberate. He made me get
down on my knees. I asked to pray, and then
(28:06):
the judge asked quote. He then fired Christina. Griffith answered yes, sir,
and Judge Allen's next words were decree granted. As part
of the settlement, it was determined that Christina would retain
custody of their son, Vandel, and that Griffith would pay
for the boy's education. Christina was also awarded sixty five
thousand dollars. After the divorce was settled, she receded from
(28:29):
the public eye and lived out the rest of her
life with her sister Lucy Whipple's family, until her death
in ninety eight at the age of eighty four. When
Griffith finished his two years sentence, he was sober, repentant
and really eager to rehabilitate his image, so after several years,
he once again turned to grand gestures in an effort
(28:50):
to re establish himself as a Los Angeles philanthropist. In
nineteen twelve, Griffith offered the city of Los Angeles a
hundred thousand dollars to be put to we're building an
observatory on Griffith Peak, which is known today as Mount Hollywood.
But while the city council had been willing to take
a huge gift of land from the man that a
(29:10):
lot of people at the time believe to be a
society poser. They were not so keen on taking a
huge sum of money from him having been convicted of
the spelony, even if he had served his sentence. I mean,
the nature of the crime also, I think would be
a deterrent. And keep in mind, like these are very
high level, powerful, wealthy families in the area. So it's
(29:37):
a little bit tricky because the Mesmer family, of course
was very very powerful and wealthy. But Griffith also kind
of in some ways, you know, had had the city
a little bit over a barrel, like he had those
water rights that he had essentially given them. It was
all a little bit weird, but they so they kind
of put him off. It was like, we'll think about it.
(29:58):
And then in a similar move following year nineteen thirteen,
Griffith offered the city fifty thousand dollars. This was to
be put towards building a Greek theater in Griffith Park,
and once again there wasn't exactly a no, but there
wasn't any real movement to accept the offer. They kind
of like went to operations slowdown with it. Griffith was
undoubtedly hurt by this refusal to accept his gifts, but
(30:20):
he still had a vision for these two projects, and
of course today there are a Greek Theater and the
Griffith Observatory. They were built, but that did not happen
until later in nine Griffith died after a prolonged illness
which was reported as liver trouble. His image was still
tarnished in the minds of many of the city's residents,
(30:41):
although the obituary that ran in the l A Times
did not mention the assault, or his conviction or any
of that. It instead recounted his philanthropic works and kind
of left it at that. Upon his death, it was
revealed that Griffith had set up a trust to ensure
that his observatory and the Greek Theater project did forward,
and the city did use the funds from that trust
(31:03):
to carry out construction on both of them. The Greek
Theater was completed in nineteen thirty and the Griffith Observatory
was finished in nineteen thirty five. And now people know
his name, which is probably what he wanted in the
first place. Yeah, done, dune, Dune, do you have some
listener mail to take us out. I do, uh, it's
(31:25):
about me being a dumbhead in our Jean Baptiste dedn'ty episode.
It's from our listener Kate, who writes, Dear Holly and Tracy.
First off, I want to say I absolutely love your podcast.
It is fascinating and well researched, and I know you
both worked hard to uplift marginalized stories. That said, I
think you made a major misstep with today's episode on
Jean Baptis, Denny and the blood transfusion race. I understand
(31:46):
why you chose to include a warning about animal experimentation
at the beginning. However, the fact that you included this
warning and made no mention of the fact that a
human being was abducted and forced to undergo a medical
experiment against his will came across as incredibly classist and frankly,
talkingly devoid of empathy. I don't know you personally, but
I think I've listened to enough of your work to
know this was not your intention. I know you mentioned
(32:07):
having discussions about how graphic to get with various topics
other than animals, but I think you need to consider
not just what you are saying in these warnings, But
what you are saying with these warnings, this warning you
put on the episode prioritize the welfare of animals over
that of a man experiencing homelessness. You basically said, we
expect the harm done to these animals to be more
disturbing than the kidnapping, assault, and eventual murder of Antoine
(32:28):
moray More who I'm sorry, I do not believe you
actually feel that way, but that is how it came across.
As I said, I adore your podcast. I'm sorry this
is what it took to get me to write in.
I've thought about it multiple times for much happier reasons,
but never got around to it. Thank you for the
work you do. I will say this is not this
completely valid criticism. I will say I think part of
it for me is that any time there is an
(32:50):
early stage UM medical development story, I kind of assume
humans are going to be horrible to each other, which
is part of why I that didn't even occur to
me UM. So it's a really good point. I will
just as a correction, he was not homeless, though he
was believed to be. He had a home, he just
didn't tend to go to it. Um, not that that
(33:10):
makes any difference. It's just for clarity, because I don't
want more wad story to become confused. Um. Yeah, I
mean it's it's always tricky and I know. Um. The
other thing I will say is that we get mixed
reactions anytime we issue any kind of warning in the episode.
There are lots of times when people say, why did
you warn us? That ruins the story and it's stupid
(33:32):
and people should just know that history is full of horrors,
and other people who say, I really wish you had
told me this was going to happen. Yeah. A lot
of times. What I'm trying to make that call it,
it's a lot of times when it seems like something
that would not be expected in the course of the episode.
Like if the title of the episode is the such
and such massacre, I'm probably not gonna issue a warning
(33:57):
about there being a lot of violence in the episode. Um.
But if it's a story about a breed of flowers
and there's some kind of like horrific murder, and I'm
probably gonna say something about the murder at the beginning.
Those are made up examples, right, And I mean I
I It's one of those things that I thought about
(34:17):
even with today's episode, right, I knew I wanted to
include that domestic violence warning because it is a horrifying
thing that happened and not something you necessarily expect with
the man for whom Griffith Park is named if you
don't know his back story, But I didn't include, for example,
his alcoholism is like an addiction warning, or the fact
(34:43):
that the violence was specifically gun violence, right, because that
can be right. I mean, that's the thing. It It
gets to be a tricky dance, and I don't always
do it right clearly, um, because there are so many
things that could potentially be troubling to any number of people,
(35:03):
and sometimes it's hard to predict. And also it's probably
just there's part of me that's a jaded and callous
um cynic who's like, of course, humans train each other terribly,
which I try not to let drive the bus, but
sometimes it blinds me. Um. I did also want to
mention though, that we got an email also from our
(35:25):
listener Rebecca, who really really wanted us uh, since we
had been talking about blood transfusion to mention to our
listeners the importance of donating blood. Uh. If you can
donate blood, it does a whole lot of good. Uh.
She says, each whole blood donation can save up to
three lives. If that isn't enough to make you think
about it, if it's something you can do, I know
it's a little tricky during pandemic. So yeah, there's um
(35:50):
the city where I live has been really good about
like telling people when there's a blood drive and how
they can sign up, because they're being really careful about
like how many people can be inside the space and
all that kind of thing. Um. So I think it
can be a little trickier to find a slot to
to do it for that reason. Um, but there's lots
of information available uh in any particular city about uh
(36:15):
where to do it, how to do it. Yeah, I
think you could probably do a blood donation and your
whatever your municipality or location is, and you will find
a wealth of resources. Um. And I encourage people to
do it. It is uh, As Rebecca said, it's a
an incredible gift that you're giving and uh worthwhile, particularly
at a time when a lot in the world is
(36:36):
going wrong. If you can help something go right, that
will probably make you feel better. Uh So, if you
would like to write to us, you can do so
at History podcast at iHeart radio dot com. You can
also find us on social media at missed in History.
Uh If you'd like to subscribe to the show and
you haven't already, well that sounds grand. You can do
that on the iHeart Radio app, at Apple podcast or
wherever it is you listen. Stuff you missed in History
(37:03):
Class is a production of I heart Radio. For more
podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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