May 7, 2025 • 48 mins
In this first part of a two-parter, Kate and Paul head to 1935, Los Angeles where we find an enterprising starlet lifeless in her own garage.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
I'm Kate Winkler Dawson. I'm a journalist who's spent the
last twenty five years writing about true crime.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
And I'm Paul Hols, a retired cold case investigator who's
worked some of America's most complicated cases and solve them.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most
compelling true crimes.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
And I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring
new insights to old mysteries.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime
cases through a twenty first century lens.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Some are solved and some are cold, very cold.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
This is buried Bones.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Hey, Paul, Akay, how's it going with you?
Speaker 1 (01:04):
It's going well, And I'll tell you why. I want
to tell you about an episode that I don't know
if you've heard yet, that I recorded for Wicked Words.
I feel like I've interviewed some big names, including you
of course, like a David Grhan and you know, all
of these I feel like, really big nonfiction folks. And
then across my email comes do you want an interview
(01:27):
with Marcia Clark? Oh? Okay, So I was just awestruck,
I really was, and she could not be sweeter and
the interview is fantastic. You should listen to it. It
is not about OJ Okay, nor did she want. I
don't know if she ever wants to talk about OJ
Simpson ever again, she like she says, she sort of
blocked it out of her mind. Essentially, Where were you
(01:49):
when that case was going on? Were you in Northern
California or Central or where were you?
Speaker 2 (01:53):
No? I was. I was working for the Sheriff's Crime
Lab at the time. In fact, I was some following
the case. It was a big deal in forensics because
of all the evidence, particularly DNA that was being presented,
and so we were following it pretty closely. In fact,
I actually faxed information down to the LAPD Crime Lab
(02:15):
because they're krim lists. Obviously didn't know what he was
talking about when it came to crime scene photography, and
the defense was really exploiting him on the stand, and
I was like, Okay, you need to really understand how
focal length with camera lenses can really change the front
to rear aspect ratios. So I compiled all this information
(02:36):
and faxed it down, But I distinctly remember that case.
Of course, I remember Marcia Clark in fact, I've spoken
with Marcia over the phone. She was getting involved with
TV production and I'm not sure if she still is
or not, but you know, we had chatted a little bit.
Then I actually sat next to Christopher Darden for dinner.
(02:58):
I think it was an award ceremony. I had a crime,
yeh know, So I got to chat with him a
little bit. Real nice guy. And of course, you know,
they have this whole OJ trial hanging over their heads
for you know, forever in essence, you know, but I
most certainly understand sort of how things kind of went
awry for them, and don't put a whole heck of
(03:18):
a lot of personal blame in either one of them. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
Absolutely, I read there was an article and I think
the headline was something like Marcia Clark has been absolved,
and it was kind of how she's gone from I
don't remember her being as villainized as you know, this
magazine and a lot of other media have said. Back
in ninety five, I was too busy working in a
news station to really even pay attention to all that.
(03:42):
But now she's become this feminist icon, which she is.
After talking to her, it is probably my favorite interview
of all the interviews, sorry everybody else that I've including you,
I've ever done on Wicked Words, because she's so engaging
and much like you. You know, she had the case
she had Oj Simpson, you had the Golden State Killer,
and she certainly could have taken money back from a
(04:05):
big book deal that she had and then just sort
of gone off. But she has just stayed so active.
She has novels, She's got now two nonfiction books, and
I was talking to her about the latest one that
set in nineteen fifty three. As you said, she does
TV stuff all the time, so she really has stayed active,
and it was just so interesting to talk with her
(04:26):
about the case that she was talking about on my show.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Yeah, you know, I've completely lost track of her, to
be frank, you know, so I didn't know. I don't
know what she's been up to. So this is the
first tim hearing.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Yeah, we talked a little bit about the misogyny that
was happening, which was pervasive, of course, and she was
told to soften her hair and she was told to
wear you know, kind of less I guess masculine was
the insinuation clothing, which she said, this is what I
wear to court. This isn't masculine to me to use
a softer tone. So there was so much stuff, you know,
(04:58):
looking back on it, she just said, it just takes
so long to process things like that. That's this is
stuff that you're just trying to do your job, and
that's the kind of thing that happens. She was investigating
a case from fifty three that the district attorney at
the time was heading up. This case. It was a
huge murder trial of a botched home invasion, and she
(05:20):
said that this district attorney was an icon to her
when she was working in la as a prosecutor. Everybody
knew who this guy was long after he was dead.
And then she said, I looked in the case and
it was awful. He was awful. He did so many
legal things then and now, and she said, it's really
dispiriting to have this person in your head like who
(05:40):
you're trying to strive to be. And then when she
actually looked and worked one of his cases, you know,
sixty seventy years later, to just see how many times
he failed and it was just really disheartening for her.
It was interesting.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
Yeah, yeah, because I'm thinking nineteen fifty three. So we're
talking just a handful of years after the Black Dohlia case. Yeah,
out there in LA you know. So that kind of
puts some perspective because I've kind of dug into the
Black Dolly a little bit from the investigator side, you know,
and of course law enforcement was you know, so I
don't know primorgial, if you will, relative to today in
(06:16):
terms of how they handled investigations and crime scenes and forensics.
That case, of course never went to trial, but I
can only imagine you know, her assessment of sort of
the legal mind that she held in great and high
regard and now seeing oh well maybe not so.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Yeah. Absolutely, it was putting plants in jail cells with
a young woman, you know, not taking an account into
her background, and then you know, ultimately issuing a death
sentence to a woman who was executed for essentially, you know,
being a decoy. And that was it. And I said,
would you do that now? And she said no, Now,
they're accessory to murder, accessory after the factor, all these things,
(06:54):
you know. But she got looped in with the other
two robbers who ended up killing somebody, and she just
said it was a little stunning, and the district attorney
who she respected so much, could have said, you know,
sort of mitigating circumstances with leniency. She was saying, with leniency,
and he didn't do it. I mean, in this young
woman really did very little. She knew something was going
(07:14):
to happen, but she didn't suspect a murder would happen
at all. And then you're executing a mother of three
or four people.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Yeah, you know, and it really underscores, you know, the
power that the elected DA has, you know, And I've
been in the room where the death penalty is being
debated for a particular case, and of course that's led
by the elected DA, and then the prosecutor who's handling
the case presents the case. And now you have very
senior prosecutors chief of investigations. I happen to be in
(07:44):
a couple of these during the course of my career
at the DA's office, and today it is taken very
seriously and most certainly you know this scenario you're talking
about where sounds like she was an accessory in California.
Maybe this felony murder aspect is what they used to
go after her, but in essence to apply the death
(08:05):
penalty as if she's the one that's actually committing the murder.
You know that sounds way over the top.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
Yeah, And I mean he nicknamed her the defendant Bloody
babs Oh in the courtroom in front of the jury,
and I said, is that Lee? I feel like every
other question was is that legal? Is that legal now?
Is that legal now? And every answer was like no, no, no, no,
And that's the issue.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Well the defense would object. You know, that's prejudicial, that's
influencing the jury.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
It was startling to me. So anyway, Marcia Clark, I
am a huge fan. And I even said it from
the beginning. I said, I don't think I use the
word fangirl, but I'm really going to try to not gush.
And she said, well, thank you. I listened to your show,
so very cool. Marcia Clark is a celebrity in my
little world of celebrities. So I thought you'd find that interesting.
(08:53):
And we are hanging out in southern California in the
Pacific Palisades Act for this story. But this is not
nineteen fifty three, this is nineteen thirty five. To me,
I think you're going to find this interesting enough. We're
making this a double and it involves Hollywood and an
actress who I found so interesting that I actually watched
(09:15):
one of her films from nineteen thirty I think it
was from thirty three or so. There's a lot happening
with this story.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
No, it sounds sounds cool. Now. I don't think I've
ever been in Pacific Palisades, but of course I'm very
much aware of it.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
Yeah, yeah, of course, especially with the fires earlier this year,
and I had been thinking about that. So I feel
like every time I have a case where I see
that phrase of that neighborhood, Pacific Palisades, I'm always going
to think about the fire. So we are really going
far back where we're looking at ninety years ago. So
let's go ahead and set the scene so we are
(09:51):
in nineteen thirty five. Remind me when Black Dahlia happened,
because I actually have not looked at the case at all.
I would love for you and I to talk about it,
and I think, will You're going to have to bring
it up if you think it reminds you of this
in any way.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
Okay, Well, Black Dahlia was late forties. I believe it
was nineteen forty seven. But right now I'm a little
fuzzy on the exact year that it happened. I actually interviewed.
There was an author, this Steve Hodell, who's former LAPD homicide, robbery, homicide,
and he's written several books on the Black Dahlia and
he's claiming his father is the offender in the Black
(10:25):
Dahlia case. I'm not convinced, let's just put it that way.
But it is a case that I'm highly interested in.
And I actually did reach out to a professional friend
at lada's office saying I'd be willing to help. And
basically I got back from LAPD and the lada's office
well not at this time.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
They have other priorities from something that was eighty years ago.
I guess you're right. It was in forty seven. Black
Dahlia was in forty seven.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Yeah, Well, basically they said that they were looking at
some things from the case, you know, So it sounds
like they have an interest in pursuing it. But of
course a nineteen forty seven case will take the back
burner when anything else pops up.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
Well, this is a confusing case. I don't know if
it's a cold case. So this is nineteen thirty five
the morning of Monday, December sixteenth. There is a housekeeper
named May and she's a little bit more of an assistant,
I think, to an actress movie star. Really, I'm not
even gonna say actress movie star named Thelma Todd. And
(11:30):
you know, I really was curious about Thelma. I told you,
I'll watch one of her movies and I would say
movie star. I mean, she really has a presence. She
is very well known. And I'm going to show you
a picture of her shortly, which sometimes I show you,
you know, the people who are involved. Sometimes I don't.
If I think it's relevant, you know, I'll show it
to you and it'll be relevant, I think in this case.
(11:52):
So her housekeeper shows up. She is at a house
in the Pacific Palisades. As I told you, this is
a neighborhood of la If nobody knows that. It's a
seaside community that over the past decade or so has
emerged as a secluded neighborhood for movie stars and studio executives.
(12:12):
And they build these incredible Mediterranean style homes so they
can get away from the hustle and bustle of Hollywood.
It's very, very hilly, so the housekeeper May works for
twenty nine year old Thelma Todd. She is a movie star,
and I'm just gonna jump right to it. She's our victim.
I think I want to give you kind of a
(12:33):
lot of context about her upfront, because I do think
it's relevant, especially with witnesses coming up. So she is
not a small time actress. She was in one hundred
and twenty feature films, feature films and a lot of
shorts over the last nine years. So she starred with
names you're going to recognize, right, Buster Keaton, the Marx Brothers,
Laurel and Harty, and then a whole list of people
(12:55):
who I'm pretty sure are famous, but I had not
heard of. She was slapstick. That was specialty, and that's
why I wanted to watch one of her films. So
there's a film called The ten Man and it's a
short and it was really good. I watched it on
YouTube and she is very lucy, of I love Lucy.
She's paired up with a woman in the scene that
I was watching. You know, they're very very lucy and ethyl,
(13:19):
and so I watched it before I really dug into
the story, just because any opportunity I know you do
this too. Any opportunity I have to feel like I
have a deeper connection with our victim, I wanted to
take and so, you know, it just kind of left
me sad more than anything, but sad's appropriate when you're
looking into an investigation. Also, I assume, I know, you
(13:40):
want to know everything about the victim. I'm not sure
this movie that I watched was relevant to this case.
I actually know it it wasn't, but I just felt
like I really wanted to see. Do you feel like
that too?
Speaker 2 (13:52):
Well? You know, with the cases that I work, you know,
one of the first things that I do is try
to learn as much about the victim as I possibly can.
You know, and I've said this over and over, victimology
is huge. You know, so who the victim is, what
the victim is up to, you know where the victim
is going. You know, all these circumstances surrounding the victim
(14:12):
sometimes can lead to the investigation to determine who's the
one that's the offender, who's the one that's responsible for
let's say, if it's a homicide. So that's that's important,
you know for the cases that I primarily focused in on.
You know, out of the sixties and the seventies. Oftentimes
I didn't have video of the victims like nowadays. You know,
(14:34):
if somebody ends up being a victim, there's all this
social media stuff that's been posted, and you can really
see the victim in life. In this case, you know,
nineteen thirty five with Thelma Todd. You know, this is
probably an unusual circumstance where now you know, a homicide
victim you can actually see in life. Now she's portraying somebody.
(14:56):
She's an actress, right, so it's not necessarily her and
her personality, but it's still a living person that you know,
ended up dying for one reason or another.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
Yeah. One thing about Thelma that I think would occur
with any Hollywood actress or actor, or anybody who's well
known as this would be somebody who strangers would recognize.
You know, we're often talking about that. In all of
my cases, it feels like I hear the same thing
over and over again, especially in the eighteen hundreds. It
looks like that guy, Yeah, that guy looked like your suspect.
(15:28):
But Thelma Todd was and I'm going to show you
the photo in a second, Thelma Todd would have stood
out even in Pacific Palisades at this time. So that's
what makes to me this story really interesting too.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
Well, it sounds like she was a highly successful actor,
you know, so she was celebrity famous. Yeah, you know,
the name is tickling my brain, you know, but I'm
not picturing who she is.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
Well you can picture her now and this is a headshot.
Let me know what you think.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
Oh yeah. One of the things that I do that
people might think is somewhat strange. There's a YouTube channel
called Hollywood Graveyard and it's very well done. And this
guy he goes to the various cemeteries around and he's
now doing it all over the world, but he started
out there in the LA area, and he, you know,
(16:19):
tells stories about the various celebrities that are buried or
interred in some manner at these various cemeteries. And I
believe that he's covered Thelma Todd if she's out there,
that she looks very familiar.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
Yeah. So Gene Harlowe was considered the original bombshell, and
bombshell now I think would be considered an insult for
a woman, you know, dismissive and really concentrating on her looks,
but Thelma Todd was in that category for Hollywood in
the nineteen thirties. She was definitely considered the blonde bombshell.
(16:53):
I'm going to skip right over that and just say
she was an excellent actress, obviously incredibly success and she
was also somebody who had businesses. And that plays into
it a little bit here too. Where we are when
all this stuff starts to happen with Thelma is at
the time of her death, she was shooting a movie,
and she was starring in two, how roach films that
(17:16):
were about to be released. One was called All American Toothache.
I watched part of that, and another one was called
Bohemian Girl, and that's on my list. So she lives
in an apartment above the restaurant that she owns. She
runs this place. It's called Thelma Todd's Sidewalk Cafe, and
it's on what we now call the Pacific Coast Highway,
(17:37):
right on the ocean. So this is sort of her
retirement plan. And she was one of the very first
celebrities to sort of use her brand, you know, put
her actual name on a cafe rather than just calling
it the sidewalk Cafe. She put her name on it,
and that was not usual. So that's what we mean
by she was sort of innovative and somebody who really
(17:58):
wanted to be aggressive. Writing that at age twenty nine
in the nineteen thirties, she could have been not far
another decade off of her career. Unfortunately, I don't know,
but she was planning ahead. So now we've got a
Hollywood actress who also seems to have some money, and
she has an investment in a business and is well known.
So that's where we stand right now.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
Okay, Yeah, So in essence, this celebrity aspect is of
course going to draw attention and just from her, you know,
the prolific nature of the number of films she's been in.
You know, people that may have bad intent of course,
are going to assume she's got a lot of money,
and it sounds like with some of the business aspects
(18:41):
she's utilizing her money wisely. So she even has more
money than maybe the average actress at that time. Yep.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
So let's talk about her as a person. So May
the housekeeper wants to find out where Thelma is, but
she also kind of understands that Thelma is a young
woman who likes to go out a lot. She stays
out late at night. She might not come home, and
so I don't think she's particularly alarmed just yet. It's
not out of character for her to sleep away from home,
(19:10):
especially on a weekend. She has a really active social life.
And we have some more details on water social life
was like coming up, May looks through this apartment, there's
no one there. Then she goes to the house up
the hill, and this is where Thelma stays. Sometimes she
is not there either. Now here is just sort of
a theoretical question. I guess May has not decided to
(19:33):
call the police yet, and you know, I know it's
because she's thinking in her head, well, she doesn't have
to report to me when she's doing what and when.
But at the same time, you know, at what point
should somebody call the police? Is if somebody has not
come home and it's completely out of their character, I
just don't know what at what point do you sort
of draw that line. It's intimidating to call the police, Paul,
(19:56):
to me, at least, because you know, if somebody walks
through the door, you feel stupid. You have to explain stuff.
So I think probably a lot of people feel like that.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
Yeah, I can see where there would be some reservation.
You know, it's so variable as to when somebody should
call the police. You know. Here with May, it sounds like,
I mean, you described her as a housekeeper, but it
sounds like she was more of a like an assistant yea,
you know, helping Thelma with all her day in and
day out activities, coordinating things, et cetera. So more of
(20:27):
like an executive assistant. And so I would say, you know,
under that set of circumstances, you know, it sounds like
Thelma not coming back to the apartment that particular night.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
It's a Sunday night, and you know, we're going to
find out that she was last seen Saturday. Okay, So
as far as May new, Thelma went out, and I'll
tell you with who in a little bit Saturday night.
She hasn't talked to her since. And it's Monday morning,
and she I think she's thinking, well, I don't know,
because it's been Sunday and Monday. I'm surprised she's not
here Monday morning because she would have been working at
(21:02):
the cafe and doing stuff with the cafe.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
I would say, you know, May's insight into what Thelma's
normal routine would be because of May's position with Thelma,
where she's now seeing Thelma is not doing what she
normally would, you know, now it's stepping outside the routine
depending on like if Thelma is not showing up at
(21:24):
the restaurant and the restaurant ends up having to be
closed or whatever, you know, or Thelma has some sort
of meeting with a network executive or whatever it is,
and May's going Thelma wouldn't do this now at this point,
then there should be concerned, Yeah, because now this is
outside of the victimology that we know of for Thelma
(21:45):
that May knows for Thelman. And I would say that's
kind of the same for any time somebody goes missing.
You know, law enforcement needs to do a better job
listening to the families because the families go, this isn't right, right,
But oftentimes they're reporting an adult missing, and so many
times when that happens, law enforcement, you know, goes, well,
(22:06):
this person has just left and they have an absolute
right to leave, and we're not going to spend resources
to try to track that person down until there's a
set of circumstances in which now we think there's an
endangered aspect to this missing adult. But with Thelma right now,
it seems like May is recognizing Thelma would not normally
(22:28):
be missing at this particular time during the day.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
Absolutely, so May knows there are a few more places
she can check. She's not in the apartment down below,
She's not up the hill at this place, and this
is a big hill too, you know where she would
kind of go back and forth between staying at the
house at the top of the hill staying in her apartment.
So May decides she needs to look a few more
(22:53):
places before we talk about, you know where else she looks.
I want to say that the reason that Thelma stays
at the house on the hill sometimes is that she's
been dating a movie director for quite a while. His
name is Roland West, and he's the one who owns
that house. Nobody's at this house, and May has apparently
a key to be able to get in Roland and Thelma.
(23:16):
This is where things get a little complicated. Roland and
Thelma own the apartment above the restaurant together, but they
have separate bedrooms which are divided by a sliding wooden door,
and Roland is still technically married to another actress named
jul Carmen. Jewel is not a big Hollywood star. She's
(23:38):
a small time actress and it sounds like her career
acting might be somewhat over. So she is married to Roland,
and technically, while Thelma owns part of the restaurant Thelma
Todd's Cafe, Roland and Jewel together own part of it. Also,
it's a little murky with this whole relation ship thing
(24:00):
is like, but it doesn't sound like there have been
public blowups. They're not in the press. It seems like
whatever is happening seems kind of cordial in a way,
or maybe they've worked out some kind of an agreement.
But now you've got Thelma involved with another Hollywood actress
and then a director, and everybody seems to be kind
(24:21):
of sharing residences. It kind of gets odd after this, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
You know, of course, you know, this sounds like the
typical lover's triangle, you know, in which you could potentially
have jealousies arise. And it really does come down to,
you know, what does Jewel, Roland's wife know about his
relationship with Thelma. Is this something that she has accepted,
you know? So of course, early investigations into the victimology,
(24:50):
and once this is found out, then it's you know,
talking to Roland, talking to Jewel and go, okay, what's
going on here? You know? Is this something that's just
a an open type of marriage and this was an
accepted relationship. There's financial aspects that bind the three together
up and beyond the relationships, you know, with the ownership
(25:12):
of the restaurant, et cetera. So that's that's interesting.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
What do you think about the separate bedrooms thing? Is
that surprising to you? Knowing he's married, and I do
think Jewel stays there.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
I don't know, I don't think, you know, I'm not
overly surprised by that. I think it just depends on
what Thelma and Roland's relationship really is like, you know,
and it could just be a convenience aspect, you know,
whether maybe these these rooms above the restaurant are very small,
you know, or they just prefer to sleep separately when
they're not engaging together. You know. I don't know, you know,
(25:46):
I don't put a lot of weight on that right now,
you know, I think just the dynamics of the Thelma,
Roland and Jewel triangle, of course, is a red flag
at least at this stage.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
Okay, tell me tell you about the connection and how
you would travel from the apartment, which is by the ocean,
up to this monster hill to get to Roland's beautiful house.
The restaurant and the apartment are directly downhill from Roland's house.
And I will have two incredibly confusing maps for you
(26:21):
in just a few minutes. And thank you for You're
welcome for that. Sometimes I think that these are awful maps,
and then you look at them and go, well, this
is the best thing I've ever seen, Kate. Thank you
bring me more of these terrible maps, so we'll see
what you say. But to get from the apartment or
the cafe up to Roland's place in a car, there
(26:41):
are a lot of little hairpin turns that you would
have to get to. It's not easy. It's not a
straight shot. And then if you're going by foot, it
would have been a hill of a climb. It's several
steep staircases in the hillside. Thelma, and I'll tell you
a little bit more about this in a second had
developed a heart can and May used to drive her
(27:03):
up in her car to get to the top. If
she wanted to spend the night at Roland's house, and
then Thelma would drive down or maybe May would walk up,
and it didn't seem like a huge deal for May,
but it was substantial. I don't know if you want
to see that now, but it does come into play
about Thelma and how she would have gone from one
place to the other if she had a heart condition,
(27:23):
or we could get to her what happens to her.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
Yeah, let's get to let's get to sort of the
heart of the matter, and then we can expand out
from there.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
There's no sign of Thelma anywhere. May looks in the
house's too car garage, So I think I said this before.
On most days May is going to park her own
car in this garage, so she'll drive up, she'll park
her car or walk up or whatever, and then she'll
drive Thelma's car to the bottom of the cliff where
the cafe and the apartment are, so that Thelma doesn't
(27:55):
have to make this track because she fainted on the
set of a film, and her mom says, the doctor
diagnosed her with this heart condition. So what would that be.
Is that just a slow heart rate or I don't
know what that would even be. It could be anything,
I guess.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
Just low blood pressure, you know, you know she stood
up too quickly, and yeah, so it just depends. But
of course, you know, the heart condition is something that
has to be weighed in in terms of you know,
what happens to Thelma down the road, you know, is
this something where she could have had a fatal incident
and is found dead right now? Of course I know
(28:33):
nothing about what's going on with Elma.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
So in the garage may finds Thelma's total kick ass car.
And I liked it so much that I included not
it because I couldn't find a photo of it, but
I included this type of car, so you probably know
it because you're smarty about cars. This is a chocolate
brown Lincoln Phaantin. Have you heard of that?
Speaker 2 (28:55):
Oh yeah, I've heard of that for sure.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
I just wanted to show it to you. I mean,
this car, and not to talk about her looks, but
she would have looked gorgeous in this car, and she
had a driver much of the time. I mean, this
is what I mean by later on when we have
witnesses to different things. She would have stood out on
so many different levels. And I know that this is
still Hollywood, but this was a beautiful car.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
Yeah. No, that's a head turner. If Thelma's a head turner.
So of course you know she's you know, she's driving
around in a vehicle like this. She's not trying to
be discreet, you know that, she's like here, I am Okay.
Speaker 1 (29:29):
May sees her car. She is alarmed because she couldn't
find Thelma anywhere else. She looks inside the car, and
this is where we see Thelma's body. May does not
examine her at all. She just sees her slumped over,
and she gets very upset. Of course, she runs down
to the cafe, flying down those steep steps. She finds
(29:51):
a general manager. He calls the police. So this is
all Monday morning, and she was last seen Saturday night
as far as we know right now. So I can
tell you what her body looked like. But I also
can immediately talk about the autopsy too.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
So you tell me.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
I know you like autopsy stuff, but what do you think.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
Yeah, well, let's uh, let's get into the crime scene
first in terms of understanding her body in context, you know,
in sits you in the back of this car, and
then go into the autopsy.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
So she has found slumped over the steering wheel. We
find out that her nose is broken and she was
bleeding from the mouth, but police think it's because she
passed out and hit her face against the steering wheel.
I think one of the reasons is, this is an
interesting bit here. May said the garage was closed and
(30:47):
that when she saw Thelma and she saw, you know,
a little bit of bleeding and she's laying over the
steering wheel, that she was unusually red. Her face was
really red. Let's kind of of start there. They're not
saying trauma, and their immediate response is not this is
you know, somebody who's been beaten up. But what do
(31:08):
you kind of think so far the way that I've
laid it out, or do you need more info?
Speaker 2 (31:12):
Well, I think with sort of the thumbnail sketch, broken nose,
bleeding out of the mouth, which you know possibly can
occur as a result of you know, the trauma to
the nose, in terms of evaluating the fracture to the nose,
you know, is you know, how much damage is truly there?
Is it consistent with somebody who's just now passes out
(31:35):
and nose hits a hard steering wheel or is there
more damage to that, And so that'd be something that
would be determined at autopsy, as well as what other
injuries she has on her body. You know, the red
kind of it sounds like her face is flush, and
you know, there's a variety of reasons why that can occur.
(31:56):
You know, one of the first things, just due to
the context of where she's found out in a car
inside a closed garage, is is it possible that there's
a carbon monoxide poisoning accidental? Potentially? You know, she was
sitting in that that car for too long? Is the
car still running when may you know, enters in? Does
(32:18):
she detect something's wrong? Is a car completely out of
gas but the ignition is turd like it's still running?
You know, then that might suggest that you know, she
for whatever reason, drove into the garage, closed the garage
and stayed in there too long and then ultimately succumbed
to carbon monoxide. So there's that aspect, you know, is
there potentially does the heart condition weigh in? Is there
(32:42):
a circulatory type of issue that's causing the red flushing?
And then of course there's there's different acts of islence
such as strangulation, you know, which could cause that that
red flushing. So at this point, I think, you know,
the investigators are, they're evaluating what's going on. It. It
is unusual to see a homicide victim just seated in
(33:05):
a car, slumped over the steering wheel, if it's not
a gunshot victim. You know, we often see that today
with shootings. But I'm assuming right now she's not a
gunshot victim or a stabbing victim or something like that.
And so now they're assessing things and reconstructing, and they're
probably going this very likely could just be an accidental
(33:27):
death or could be a natural if she had if
the heart condition weighed in as to the reason why
she ended up deceased inside this vehicle.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
Yeah, and I think there's a lot of speculation about that.
Was it the heart condition that contributed to this? Did
she climb up all of those stairs herself? And then
something happened she got into the car. So let me
just tell you a couple of facts that are important
and then we can get to the autop seat. Number One.
May saw Thelma Saturday night before she went to an event,
(33:59):
and she said she's wearing the same clothing she was
wearing a mauve and silver dress and a mink coat
and lots of expensive jewelry. She had an expensive handbag
with her. None of it was touched. It's all there,
so you know at first blush. She's been there since
Saturday night, early Sunday morning, whenever you know she left
(34:22):
this event. So they're trying to get a timeline together,
but that's going to come into questions soon. The other
note is that police do find the key in the
ignition to her fancy car. It was turned to the
on position, but the car was not running. So this
is out of my pay grade. So I'm just going
(34:43):
to tell you what it is and you can tell
me what you think. This is a combustible engine, so
there is no catalytic converter. I don't even know what
that was. I didn't until I had to pay for one,
and then I found out really quick witted.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
Expensive because of the precious metals inside there.
Speaker 1 (34:57):
I mean, I think it's the worst thing you can
pay for. So I can think my kids for all
the driving with them with a new catlet converter. He said,
how did you put this many miles on this car?
It's only a couple of years old. So the police
say that this is because the car's engine, because it's
a combustible engine, needs oxygen to run. So if something
(35:17):
happens and the car has turned on, once the garage
is filled up with carbon monoxide, there's no more oxygen
and the engine would just cut off. Does that sound right?
Speaker 2 (35:27):
Yes, it does.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
What happens now with the engine? First of all, what
kind of engines do we have?
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Now?
Speaker 1 (35:32):
I know we should know that I should know that.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
It's the same, you know, in terms of for gasoline engines.
In essence, they're just combustion engines, and so you know,
they're fundamentally operate the same way as this particular engine,
just obviously more advanced. You need oxygen for fire. Well,
that's in essence what happens inside the cylinder of you know,
(35:56):
one of the chambers within these engines, and you know this,
this particular car possibly had anywhere from eight to twelve cylinders,
and there's a spark plug in each cylinder, and then
there's a source of fuel that sprays into the cylinder,
and so now you have this gas vapor and then
(36:16):
as the cylinder comes up and compresses that gas, there's
a spark from the spark plug that ignites the gas
and in order for that gas to actually combust to
produce pressure to force the cylinder down, which ultimately is
the mechanism that is translated into being able to move
(36:37):
the vehicle. Once there's no oxygen, that combustion engine can't
operate anymore. So if that garage filled up with sufficient
carbon monoxide, I would say, yeah, theoretically, it's possible that
the engine just died and had been left running for
a period of time.
Speaker 1 (36:55):
Okay, well, let's keep that in mind, because you know,
there are a lot of theories that are going to
be flowing around nineteen thirty five LA. Pretty soon. There
is someone who comes, a doctor who comes and examines
her body. His name is JP Sampson. When doctor Sampson
looks at Thelma's body, he says, she has been dead
for about twelve hours. Now. I don't know how he
(37:19):
determines that. I don't think they use liver temperature, but
maybe it was rigor. But just doing math, let's say
this happens at nine am. That puts her death at
nine pm Sunday night. But she's wearing the clothes from
Saturday night.
Speaker 2 (37:35):
So you know, one of the things I want to
address about her clothes. You know, may sees her leaving
Saturday night in those clothes. What we don't know is
it possible that she stayed in those clothes alive for
how long period of time? More did she redress into
(37:56):
those clothes, you know? And those are the clothes she
came back to Roland's place in this vehicle. So it's
kind of hard to draw a firm conclusion that whatever
happened to Thelma happened Saturday night because we just don't
know anything about her state of dress, and you know
(38:17):
how long she had those clothes on before she ended
up dying. So it's interesting it. I would say, what
you could conclude as well, she did not get back
to her residence or a location where she had closed
that she would be wanting to change into, you know,
that would be part of it. To try to timeline
exactly when something happened to Thelma based on her dress
(38:40):
would be tough.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
Yes, I have had times in my youth where I
have been in the same clothing for six years and
I wasn't camping, I was living in New York, So yes,
well we'll see I don't trust the twelve hour timeline either.
I guess we'll just see how this progresses well.
Speaker 2 (38:58):
And even the pathologist saying she's been dead for twelve hours,
that's just a rough rough guess.
Speaker 1 (39:05):
So we've got the autopsy. Thelma's brain and organs are
described in the autopsy report as scarlet red of blood,
and her body is also discolored red. Her blood is
found to have a seventy five to eighty percent saturation
of carbon monoxide, which.
Speaker 2 (39:25):
Is classic, you know, this is when you see somebody
like this and at autopsy the pathologist is immediately going, okay,
we've got carbon monoxide. You know, this is even before
there's any type of toxicology testing going on. It's that
this is almost diagnostic, you know. And the question is
is you know, at this point, okay, is this is
(39:47):
it accidental? Is it natural? Or is there a chance
that there is violence inflicted on her to a point
to where she is unconscious and is left inside this
garage and now the carbon monoxide is building up from
the running car and then she succumbs to the carbon
monoxide poisoning. But the reality is is that there was
(40:11):
a violent act at the hands of another you know,
so too early to really draw a conclusion, but most
certainly at this point unless you tell me of other
significant injuries to her. At this point, carbon monoxide sounds
like the primary cause of death.
Speaker 1 (40:27):
Yes, and there are no other significant injuries other than
what I had mentioned before, a little bleeding at the
mouth and a broken nose, which investigators conclude very quickly
is because you know, when carbon monoxide started to take effect,
that her face hit the steering wheel, which would have
been a very heavy steering wheel, would probably or mahoggitting,
(40:49):
I don't know what it would have been, and broke
her nose. The question I think that is going to
come as is this suicide? Is this an accident? How
would this have been an accident? Or is this something else?
Because there are a lot of complicated things happening.
Speaker 2 (41:03):
Right now, it appears that the medical findings aren't differentiating
the manner of death. So there is no sign of strangulation,
there's no defensive injuries obviously I've already asked, there's no
stab wounds, no gunshot wounds, etc. So fundamentally, you've got
(41:24):
a fractured nose, bleeding out of the mouth, and carbon
monoxide poisoning. Basically, all types of manners of death potentially
are on the table, though homicide kind of becomes less
likely but not eliminated. Based on these circumstances.
Speaker 1 (41:42):
I'm going to talk in a little bit about what
she did that night, who she was with, and the
circumstances about why homicide definitely needs to stay on the table.
The corner, so there was doctor Sampson, but there's also
a corner, separate person who said after his examination and
that Thelma had been dead more like thirty hours when
(42:04):
she was found, which of course is much closer to
the Saturday night mark. Again, what's reliable here and what isn't.
I don't have notes on what they were using. I
think it was probably rigor. I don't think they were
using liver temperature at this point.
Speaker 2 (42:19):
You know, rigor would be part of it. You know,
that's one of the first things that the pathologists are
going to note in terms of how long the body
has been dead, you know, the body temperature. You know,
this was occurring mid December, you know, but you're also
dealing with la you know, on the coastal front there.
You know, it's maybe seventy degrees in the winter time
at times. You know, it's not excessively hot, it's not
(42:41):
excessively cold. My assessment what I would want to be
taking a look at. You know, they're drawing a conclusion
that she hit her nose on the steering wheel. If
that's what happened, you know, you imagine her head going forward.
She's basically collapsing and probably doesn't revive after that point. Right, So, now,
are the blood flows out of the nose, the blood
(43:04):
patterns inside the vehicle consistent with that last movement of
her body that caused the bleeding to occur, or is
there blood in discrete locations that would not line up
with this idea of just slumping forward, as if she
let's say, somebody punched her in the nose, she gets
knocked out, and then that person puts her into a
(43:27):
seated position in the driver's seat, you know, and leaves
the vehicle running inside this closed garage. That's where now
you have to start really paying attention to the details.
And I'm not sure you have those details.
Speaker 1 (43:39):
Well, let's see, we do have a lot of information
about what she did that night, and you're right, like
more theories and maybe a little bit more information do
you think that carbon monoxide poisoning would throw off time
of death estimations at all or.
Speaker 2 (43:53):
No, generally not. Now, part of what you know we
look at at a crime scene is lividity. Blood settles
with gravity. After you die, your heart is no longer pumping,
and so as Thelma is seated there slumped over, heart stops.
Blood settles to the lower parts of her body, showing
(44:14):
the position that she's in. That lividity is something that
I would be paying attention to to see had she
laid in a position different than the position that she
is ultimately found in. Lividity sets after a certain period
of time, So if somebody has moved prior to the
lividity setting, then the lividity the blood shifts inside the
(44:36):
body and so the original lividity pattern is changed. But
once the lividity pattern sets, when the body's moved from
the time that they die to the time that they
ultimately are found, the libidity will show that. And the
extent of the lividity is possibly something the pathologists may
(44:57):
be relying upon to get a better sense in terms
of of how long somebody's been dead under select circumstances,
the carbon monoxide poisoning can make it tougher to see
the faint lividity aspects just because of the coloration due
to the carbon monoxide. Various decomposational processes are occurring, and
(45:17):
if she's been dead for thirty hours, it's possible you
could start to see some of like her veins become
darker as the bacteria are starting to decompose the blood
inside the veins, they become very prominent looking. This is
what we call marbling, and that possibly can occur within
(45:37):
that thirty hour period of time. Or you could start
to see the dissension of the you know, the bloating
of the abdomen, you know, as the gases from the
gut bacteria start to build up, or you get a
greenish tinge to the abdomen. You know, this is indicating
that she's probably been dead longer than twelve hours. So
the pathologist, if he's doing proper documentation in his autopsy report,
(46:01):
if he's saying she's been dead for thirty hours, then
he should be listing the characteristics that he is observing
to come to that opinion.
Speaker 1 (46:10):
Well, as we wrap up this first episode, I'm going
to talk about why this is a two parter because
there were a lot of suspicions about her death. There
were a lot of things that investigators thought were really odd,
and her mother really thought was odd. So Number one,
we've already noted that her car is parked in the
(46:31):
garage at the top of this massive hill, and I
will give you a hint for the next episode. She
did not drive it. She had a driver who took
her to an event and then took her and dropped
her off at three am at her apartment. Oh right,
And her car had been at Roland's house up the
(46:52):
hill all day. She just didn't want to deal with driving,
and she had a driver, you know, take her places
that day. Her mother says that there is no way
at three in the morning she climbed the steps that
would have just taken her out completely. She had never
done it before to get up to Roland's house. How
did she get up to Roland's house? And she's also
(47:12):
had some threats in the last couple of months, so
there's a lot happening with this story.
Speaker 2 (47:18):
Yeah, so the plot thickens.
Speaker 1 (47:20):
Mary stole that from some hard boiled detective novel you read.
Have you ever said that in real life? The plot thickens.
Speaker 2 (47:30):
No, not that I can recall except now.
Speaker 1 (47:33):
Okay, So next week we will talk more about that
absolutely fantastic Thelmatod and the tragedy that is her death,
whatever happened to her.
Speaker 2 (47:43):
Hopefully, by the end of the next episode we will
get to the bottom of this.
Speaker 1 (47:47):
I hope so too. I will see you next week.
Speaker 2 (47:49):
All right, kay, thank you. Thanks.
Speaker 1 (47:55):
This has been an exactly right production for.
Speaker 2 (47:58):
Our sources and show notes go to a exactly wrightmedia
dot com slash Buried Bones sources.
Speaker 1 (48:03):
Our senior producer is Alexis Emosi.
Speaker 2 (48:06):
Research by Maren mcclashan, Ali Elkin, and Kate Winkler Dawson.
Speaker 1 (48:10):
Our mixing engineer is Ben Tolliday.
Speaker 2 (48:13):
Our theme song is by Tom Bryfogel.
Speaker 1 (48:15):
Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac.
Speaker 2 (48:18):
Executive produced by Karen Kilgaroff, Georgia hard Stark, and Daniel Kramer.
Speaker 1 (48:22):
You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at
Buried Bones Pod.
Speaker 2 (48:27):
Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked, a Gilded
Age story of murder and the race to decode the
criminal mind, is available now.
Speaker 1 (48:34):
And Paul's best selling memoir Unmasked My Life Solving America's
cold cases is also available now.
Speaker 2 (48:41):
Listen to Buried Bones on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Kate Winkler Dawson. I'm a journalist who's spent the
last twenty five years writing about true crime.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
And I'm Paul Hols, a retired cold case investigator who's
worked some of America's most complicated cases and solve them.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most
compelling true crimes.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
And I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring
new insights to old mysteries.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime
cases through a twenty first century lens.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Some are solved and some are cold, very cold.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
This is buried Bones.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Hey, Paul, Akay, how's it going with you?
Speaker 1 (01:04):
It's going well, And I'll tell you why. I want
to tell you about an episode that I don't know
if you've heard yet, that I recorded for Wicked Words.
I feel like I've interviewed some big names, including you
of course, like a David Grhan and you know, all
of these I feel like, really big nonfiction folks. And
then across my email comes do you want an interview
(01:27):
with Marcia Clark? Oh? Okay, So I was just awestruck,
I really was, and she could not be sweeter and
the interview is fantastic. You should listen to it. It
is not about OJ Okay, nor did she want. I
don't know if she ever wants to talk about OJ
Simpson ever again, she like she says, she sort of
blocked it out of her mind. Essentially, Where were you
(01:49):
when that case was going on? Were you in Northern
California or Central or where were you?
Speaker 2 (01:53):
No? I was. I was working for the Sheriff's Crime
Lab at the time. In fact, I was some following
the case. It was a big deal in forensics because
of all the evidence, particularly DNA that was being presented,
and so we were following it pretty closely. In fact,
I actually faxed information down to the LAPD Crime Lab
(02:15):
because they're krim lists. Obviously didn't know what he was
talking about when it came to crime scene photography, and
the defense was really exploiting him on the stand, and
I was like, Okay, you need to really understand how
focal length with camera lenses can really change the front
to rear aspect ratios. So I compiled all this information
(02:36):
and faxed it down, But I distinctly remember that case.
Of course, I remember Marcia Clark in fact, I've spoken
with Marcia over the phone. She was getting involved with
TV production and I'm not sure if she still is
or not, but you know, we had chatted a little bit.
Then I actually sat next to Christopher Darden for dinner.
(02:58):
I think it was an award ceremony. I had a crime,
yeh know, So I got to chat with him a
little bit. Real nice guy. And of course, you know,
they have this whole OJ trial hanging over their heads
for you know, forever in essence, you know, but I
most certainly understand sort of how things kind of went
awry for them, and don't put a whole heck of
(03:18):
a lot of personal blame in either one of them. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
Absolutely, I read there was an article and I think
the headline was something like Marcia Clark has been absolved,
and it was kind of how she's gone from I
don't remember her being as villainized as you know, this
magazine and a lot of other media have said. Back
in ninety five, I was too busy working in a
news station to really even pay attention to all that.
(03:42):
But now she's become this feminist icon, which she is.
After talking to her, it is probably my favorite interview
of all the interviews, sorry everybody else that I've including you,
I've ever done on Wicked Words, because she's so engaging
and much like you. You know, she had the case
she had Oj Simpson, you had the Golden State Killer,
and she certainly could have taken money back from a
(04:05):
big book deal that she had and then just sort
of gone off. But she has just stayed so active.
She has novels, She's got now two nonfiction books, and
I was talking to her about the latest one that
set in nineteen fifty three. As you said, she does
TV stuff all the time, so she really has stayed active,
and it was just so interesting to talk with her
(04:26):
about the case that she was talking about on my show.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Yeah, you know, I've completely lost track of her, to
be frank, you know, so I didn't know. I don't
know what she's been up to. So this is the
first tim hearing.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Yeah, we talked a little bit about the misogyny that
was happening, which was pervasive, of course, and she was
told to soften her hair and she was told to
wear you know, kind of less I guess masculine was
the insinuation clothing, which she said, this is what I
wear to court. This isn't masculine to me to use
a softer tone. So there was so much stuff, you know,
(04:58):
looking back on it, she just said, it just takes
so long to process things like that. That's this is
stuff that you're just trying to do your job, and
that's the kind of thing that happens. She was investigating
a case from fifty three that the district attorney at
the time was heading up. This case. It was a
huge murder trial of a botched home invasion, and she
(05:20):
said that this district attorney was an icon to her
when she was working in la as a prosecutor. Everybody
knew who this guy was long after he was dead.
And then she said, I looked in the case and
it was awful. He was awful. He did so many
legal things then and now, and she said, it's really
dispiriting to have this person in your head like who
(05:40):
you're trying to strive to be. And then when she
actually looked and worked one of his cases, you know,
sixty seventy years later, to just see how many times
he failed and it was just really disheartening for her.
It was interesting.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
Yeah, yeah, because I'm thinking nineteen fifty three. So we're
talking just a handful of years after the Black Dohlia case. Yeah,
out there in LA you know. So that kind of
puts some perspective because I've kind of dug into the
Black Dolly a little bit from the investigator side, you know,
and of course law enforcement was you know, so I
don't know primorgial, if you will, relative to today in
(06:16):
terms of how they handled investigations and crime scenes and forensics.
That case, of course never went to trial, but I
can only imagine you know, her assessment of sort of
the legal mind that she held in great and high
regard and now seeing oh well maybe not so.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Yeah. Absolutely, it was putting plants in jail cells with
a young woman, you know, not taking an account into
her background, and then you know, ultimately issuing a death
sentence to a woman who was executed for essentially, you know,
being a decoy. And that was it. And I said,
would you do that now? And she said no, Now,
they're accessory to murder, accessory after the factor, all these things,
(06:54):
you know. But she got looped in with the other
two robbers who ended up killing somebody, and she just
said it was a little stunning, and the district attorney
who she respected so much, could have said, you know,
sort of mitigating circumstances with leniency. She was saying, with leniency,
and he didn't do it. I mean, in this young
woman really did very little. She knew something was going
(07:14):
to happen, but she didn't suspect a murder would happen
at all. And then you're executing a mother of three
or four people.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Yeah, you know, and it really underscores, you know, the
power that the elected DA has, you know, And I've
been in the room where the death penalty is being
debated for a particular case, and of course that's led
by the elected DA, and then the prosecutor who's handling
the case presents the case. And now you have very
senior prosecutors chief of investigations. I happen to be in
(07:44):
a couple of these during the course of my career
at the DA's office, and today it is taken very
seriously and most certainly you know this scenario you're talking
about where sounds like she was an accessory in California.
Maybe this felony murder aspect is what they used to
go after her, but in essence to apply the death
(08:05):
penalty as if she's the one that's actually committing the murder.
You know that sounds way over the top.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
Yeah, And I mean he nicknamed her the defendant Bloody
babs Oh in the courtroom in front of the jury,
and I said, is that Lee? I feel like every
other question was is that legal? Is that legal now?
Is that legal now? And every answer was like no, no, no, no,
And that's the issue.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Well the defense would object. You know, that's prejudicial, that's
influencing the jury.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
It was startling to me. So anyway, Marcia Clark, I
am a huge fan. And I even said it from
the beginning. I said, I don't think I use the
word fangirl, but I'm really going to try to not gush.
And she said, well, thank you. I listened to your show,
so very cool. Marcia Clark is a celebrity in my
little world of celebrities. So I thought you'd find that interesting.
(08:53):
And we are hanging out in southern California in the
Pacific Palisades Act for this story. But this is not
nineteen fifty three, this is nineteen thirty five. To me,
I think you're going to find this interesting enough. We're
making this a double and it involves Hollywood and an
actress who I found so interesting that I actually watched
(09:15):
one of her films from nineteen thirty I think it
was from thirty three or so. There's a lot happening
with this story.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
No, it sounds sounds cool. Now. I don't think I've
ever been in Pacific Palisades, but of course I'm very
much aware of it.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
Yeah, yeah, of course, especially with the fires earlier this year,
and I had been thinking about that. So I feel
like every time I have a case where I see
that phrase of that neighborhood, Pacific Palisades, I'm always going
to think about the fire. So we are really going
far back where we're looking at ninety years ago. So
let's go ahead and set the scene so we are
(09:51):
in nineteen thirty five. Remind me when Black Dahlia happened,
because I actually have not looked at the case at all.
I would love for you and I to talk about it,
and I think, will You're going to have to bring
it up if you think it reminds you of this
in any way.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
Okay, Well, Black Dahlia was late forties. I believe it
was nineteen forty seven. But right now I'm a little
fuzzy on the exact year that it happened. I actually interviewed.
There was an author, this Steve Hodell, who's former LAPD homicide, robbery, homicide,
and he's written several books on the Black Dahlia and
he's claiming his father is the offender in the Black
(10:25):
Dahlia case. I'm not convinced, let's just put it that way.
But it is a case that I'm highly interested in.
And I actually did reach out to a professional friend
at lada's office saying I'd be willing to help. And
basically I got back from LAPD and the lada's office
well not at this time.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
They have other priorities from something that was eighty years ago.
I guess you're right. It was in forty seven. Black
Dahlia was in forty seven.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Yeah, Well, basically they said that they were looking at
some things from the case, you know, So it sounds
like they have an interest in pursuing it. But of
course a nineteen forty seven case will take the back
burner when anything else pops up.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
Well, this is a confusing case. I don't know if
it's a cold case. So this is nineteen thirty five
the morning of Monday, December sixteenth. There is a housekeeper
named May and she's a little bit more of an assistant,
I think, to an actress movie star. Really, I'm not
even gonna say actress movie star named Thelma Todd. And
(11:30):
you know, I really was curious about Thelma. I told you,
I'll watch one of her movies and I would say
movie star. I mean, she really has a presence. She
is very well known. And I'm going to show you
a picture of her shortly, which sometimes I show you,
you know, the people who are involved. Sometimes I don't.
If I think it's relevant, you know, I'll show it
to you and it'll be relevant, I think in this case.
(11:52):
So her housekeeper shows up. She is at a house
in the Pacific Palisades. As I told you, this is
a neighborhood of la If nobody knows that. It's a
seaside community that over the past decade or so has
emerged as a secluded neighborhood for movie stars and studio executives.
(12:12):
And they build these incredible Mediterranean style homes so they
can get away from the hustle and bustle of Hollywood.
It's very, very hilly, so the housekeeper May works for
twenty nine year old Thelma Todd. She is a movie star,
and I'm just gonna jump right to it. She's our victim.
I think I want to give you kind of a
(12:33):
lot of context about her upfront, because I do think
it's relevant, especially with witnesses coming up. So she is
not a small time actress. She was in one hundred
and twenty feature films, feature films and a lot of
shorts over the last nine years. So she starred with
names you're going to recognize, right, Buster Keaton, the Marx Brothers,
Laurel and Harty, and then a whole list of people
(12:55):
who I'm pretty sure are famous, but I had not
heard of. She was slapstick. That was specialty, and that's
why I wanted to watch one of her films. So
there's a film called The ten Man and it's a
short and it was really good. I watched it on
YouTube and she is very lucy, of I love Lucy.
She's paired up with a woman in the scene that
I was watching. You know, they're very very lucy and ethyl,
(13:19):
and so I watched it before I really dug into
the story, just because any opportunity I know you do
this too. Any opportunity I have to feel like I
have a deeper connection with our victim, I wanted to
take and so, you know, it just kind of left
me sad more than anything, but sad's appropriate when you're
looking into an investigation. Also, I assume, I know, you
(13:40):
want to know everything about the victim. I'm not sure
this movie that I watched was relevant to this case.
I actually know it it wasn't, but I just felt
like I really wanted to see. Do you feel like
that too?
Speaker 2 (13:52):
Well? You know, with the cases that I work, you know,
one of the first things that I do is try
to learn as much about the victim as I possibly can.
You know, and I've said this over and over, victimology
is huge. You know, so who the victim is, what
the victim is up to, you know where the victim
is going. You know, all these circumstances surrounding the victim
(14:12):
sometimes can lead to the investigation to determine who's the
one that's the offender, who's the one that's responsible for
let's say, if it's a homicide. So that's that's important,
you know for the cases that I primarily focused in on.
You know, out of the sixties and the seventies. Oftentimes
I didn't have video of the victims like nowadays. You know,
(14:34):
if somebody ends up being a victim, there's all this
social media stuff that's been posted, and you can really
see the victim in life. In this case, you know,
nineteen thirty five with Thelma Todd. You know, this is
probably an unusual circumstance where now you know, a homicide
victim you can actually see in life. Now she's portraying somebody.
(14:56):
She's an actress, right, so it's not necessarily her and
her personality, but it's still a living person that you know,
ended up dying for one reason or another.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
Yeah. One thing about Thelma that I think would occur
with any Hollywood actress or actor, or anybody who's well
known as this would be somebody who strangers would recognize.
You know, we're often talking about that. In all of
my cases, it feels like I hear the same thing
over and over again, especially in the eighteen hundreds. It
looks like that guy, Yeah, that guy looked like your suspect.
(15:28):
But Thelma Todd was and I'm going to show you
the photo in a second, Thelma Todd would have stood
out even in Pacific Palisades at this time. So that's
what makes to me this story really interesting too.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
Well, it sounds like she was a highly successful actor,
you know, so she was celebrity famous. Yeah, you know,
the name is tickling my brain, you know, but I'm
not picturing who she is.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
Well you can picture her now and this is a headshot.
Let me know what you think.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
Oh yeah. One of the things that I do that
people might think is somewhat strange. There's a YouTube channel
called Hollywood Graveyard and it's very well done. And this
guy he goes to the various cemeteries around and he's
now doing it all over the world, but he started
out there in the LA area, and he, you know,
(16:19):
tells stories about the various celebrities that are buried or
interred in some manner at these various cemeteries. And I
believe that he's covered Thelma Todd if she's out there,
that she looks very familiar.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
Yeah. So Gene Harlowe was considered the original bombshell, and
bombshell now I think would be considered an insult for
a woman, you know, dismissive and really concentrating on her looks,
but Thelma Todd was in that category for Hollywood in
the nineteen thirties. She was definitely considered the blonde bombshell.
(16:53):
I'm going to skip right over that and just say
she was an excellent actress, obviously incredibly success and she
was also somebody who had businesses. And that plays into
it a little bit here too. Where we are when
all this stuff starts to happen with Thelma is at
the time of her death, she was shooting a movie,
and she was starring in two, how roach films that
(17:16):
were about to be released. One was called All American Toothache.
I watched part of that, and another one was called
Bohemian Girl, and that's on my list. So she lives
in an apartment above the restaurant that she owns. She
runs this place. It's called Thelma Todd's Sidewalk Cafe, and
it's on what we now call the Pacific Coast Highway,
(17:37):
right on the ocean. So this is sort of her
retirement plan. And she was one of the very first
celebrities to sort of use her brand, you know, put
her actual name on a cafe rather than just calling
it the sidewalk Cafe. She put her name on it,
and that was not usual. So that's what we mean
by she was sort of innovative and somebody who really
(17:58):
wanted to be aggressive. Writing that at age twenty nine
in the nineteen thirties, she could have been not far
another decade off of her career. Unfortunately, I don't know,
but she was planning ahead. So now we've got a
Hollywood actress who also seems to have some money, and
she has an investment in a business and is well known.
So that's where we stand right now.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
Okay, Yeah, So in essence, this celebrity aspect is of
course going to draw attention and just from her, you know,
the prolific nature of the number of films she's been in.
You know, people that may have bad intent of course,
are going to assume she's got a lot of money,
and it sounds like with some of the business aspects
(18:41):
she's utilizing her money wisely. So she even has more
money than maybe the average actress at that time. Yep.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
So let's talk about her as a person. So May
the housekeeper wants to find out where Thelma is, but
she also kind of understands that Thelma is a young
woman who likes to go out a lot. She stays
out late at night. She might not come home, and
so I don't think she's particularly alarmed just yet. It's
not out of character for her to sleep away from home,
(19:10):
especially on a weekend. She has a really active social life.
And we have some more details on water social life
was like coming up, May looks through this apartment, there's
no one there. Then she goes to the house up
the hill, and this is where Thelma stays. Sometimes she
is not there either. Now here is just sort of
a theoretical question. I guess May has not decided to
(19:33):
call the police yet, and you know, I know it's
because she's thinking in her head, well, she doesn't have
to report to me when she's doing what and when.
But at the same time, you know, at what point
should somebody call the police? Is if somebody has not
come home and it's completely out of their character, I
just don't know what at what point do you sort
of draw that line. It's intimidating to call the police, Paul,
(19:56):
to me, at least, because you know, if somebody walks
through the door, you feel stupid. You have to explain stuff.
So I think probably a lot of people feel like that.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
Yeah, I can see where there would be some reservation.
You know, it's so variable as to when somebody should
call the police. You know. Here with May, it sounds like,
I mean, you described her as a housekeeper, but it
sounds like she was more of a like an assistant yea,
you know, helping Thelma with all her day in and
day out activities, coordinating things, et cetera. So more of
(20:27):
like an executive assistant. And so I would say, you know,
under that set of circumstances, you know, it sounds like
Thelma not coming back to the apartment that particular night.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
It's a Sunday night, and you know, we're going to
find out that she was last seen Saturday. Okay, So
as far as May new, Thelma went out, and I'll
tell you with who in a little bit Saturday night.
She hasn't talked to her since. And it's Monday morning,
and she I think she's thinking, well, I don't know,
because it's been Sunday and Monday. I'm surprised she's not
here Monday morning because she would have been working at
(21:02):
the cafe and doing stuff with the cafe.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
I would say, you know, May's insight into what Thelma's
normal routine would be because of May's position with Thelma,
where she's now seeing Thelma is not doing what she
normally would, you know, now it's stepping outside the routine
depending on like if Thelma is not showing up at
(21:24):
the restaurant and the restaurant ends up having to be
closed or whatever, you know, or Thelma has some sort
of meeting with a network executive or whatever it is,
and May's going Thelma wouldn't do this now at this point,
then there should be concerned, Yeah, because now this is
outside of the victimology that we know of for Thelma
(21:45):
that May knows for Thelman. And I would say that's
kind of the same for any time somebody goes missing.
You know, law enforcement needs to do a better job
listening to the families because the families go, this isn't right, right,
But oftentimes they're reporting an adult missing, and so many
times when that happens, law enforcement, you know, goes, well,
(22:06):
this person has just left and they have an absolute
right to leave, and we're not going to spend resources
to try to track that person down until there's a
set of circumstances in which now we think there's an
endangered aspect to this missing adult. But with Thelma right now,
it seems like May is recognizing Thelma would not normally
(22:28):
be missing at this particular time during the day.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
Absolutely, so May knows there are a few more places
she can check. She's not in the apartment down below,
She's not up the hill at this place, and this
is a big hill too, you know where she would
kind of go back and forth between staying at the
house at the top of the hill staying in her apartment.
So May decides she needs to look a few more
(22:53):
places before we talk about, you know where else she looks.
I want to say that the reason that Thelma stays
at the house on the hill sometimes is that she's
been dating a movie director for quite a while. His
name is Roland West, and he's the one who owns
that house. Nobody's at this house, and May has apparently
a key to be able to get in Roland and Thelma.
(23:16):
This is where things get a little complicated. Roland and
Thelma own the apartment above the restaurant together, but they
have separate bedrooms which are divided by a sliding wooden door,
and Roland is still technically married to another actress named
jul Carmen. Jewel is not a big Hollywood star. She's
(23:38):
a small time actress and it sounds like her career
acting might be somewhat over. So she is married to Roland,
and technically, while Thelma owns part of the restaurant Thelma
Todd's Cafe, Roland and Jewel together own part of it. Also,
it's a little murky with this whole relation ship thing
(24:00):
is like, but it doesn't sound like there have been
public blowups. They're not in the press. It seems like
whatever is happening seems kind of cordial in a way,
or maybe they've worked out some kind of an agreement.
But now you've got Thelma involved with another Hollywood actress
and then a director, and everybody seems to be kind
(24:21):
of sharing residences. It kind of gets odd after this, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
You know, of course, you know, this sounds like the
typical lover's triangle, you know, in which you could potentially
have jealousies arise. And it really does come down to,
you know, what does Jewel, Roland's wife know about his
relationship with Thelma. Is this something that she has accepted,
you know? So of course, early investigations into the victimology,
(24:50):
and once this is found out, then it's you know,
talking to Roland, talking to Jewel and go, okay, what's
going on here? You know? Is this something that's just
a an open type of marriage and this was an
accepted relationship. There's financial aspects that bind the three together
up and beyond the relationships, you know, with the ownership
(25:12):
of the restaurant, et cetera. So that's that's interesting.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
What do you think about the separate bedrooms thing? Is
that surprising to you? Knowing he's married, and I do
think Jewel stays there.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
I don't know, I don't think, you know, I'm not
overly surprised by that. I think it just depends on
what Thelma and Roland's relationship really is like, you know,
and it could just be a convenience aspect, you know,
whether maybe these these rooms above the restaurant are very small,
you know, or they just prefer to sleep separately when
they're not engaging together. You know. I don't know, you know,
(25:46):
I don't put a lot of weight on that right now,
you know, I think just the dynamics of the Thelma,
Roland and Jewel triangle, of course, is a red flag
at least at this stage.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
Okay, tell me tell you about the connection and how
you would travel from the apartment, which is by the ocean,
up to this monster hill to get to Roland's beautiful house.
The restaurant and the apartment are directly downhill from Roland's house.
And I will have two incredibly confusing maps for you
(26:21):
in just a few minutes. And thank you for You're
welcome for that. Sometimes I think that these are awful maps,
and then you look at them and go, well, this
is the best thing I've ever seen, Kate. Thank you
bring me more of these terrible maps, so we'll see
what you say. But to get from the apartment or
the cafe up to Roland's place in a car, there
(26:41):
are a lot of little hairpin turns that you would
have to get to. It's not easy. It's not a
straight shot. And then if you're going by foot, it
would have been a hill of a climb. It's several
steep staircases in the hillside. Thelma, and I'll tell you
a little bit more about this in a second had
developed a heart can and May used to drive her
(27:03):
up in her car to get to the top. If
she wanted to spend the night at Roland's house, and
then Thelma would drive down or maybe May would walk up,
and it didn't seem like a huge deal for May,
but it was substantial. I don't know if you want
to see that now, but it does come into play
about Thelma and how she would have gone from one
place to the other if she had a heart condition,
(27:23):
or we could get to her what happens to her.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
Yeah, let's get to let's get to sort of the
heart of the matter, and then we can expand out
from there.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
There's no sign of Thelma anywhere. May looks in the
house's too car garage, So I think I said this before.
On most days May is going to park her own
car in this garage, so she'll drive up, she'll park
her car or walk up or whatever, and then she'll
drive Thelma's car to the bottom of the cliff where
the cafe and the apartment are, so that Thelma doesn't
(27:55):
have to make this track because she fainted on the
set of a film, and her mom says, the doctor
diagnosed her with this heart condition. So what would that be.
Is that just a slow heart rate or I don't
know what that would even be. It could be anything,
I guess.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
Just low blood pressure, you know, you know she stood
up too quickly, and yeah, so it just depends. But
of course, you know, the heart condition is something that
has to be weighed in in terms of you know,
what happens to Thelma down the road, you know, is
this something where she could have had a fatal incident
and is found dead right now? Of course I know
(28:33):
nothing about what's going on with Elma.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
So in the garage may finds Thelma's total kick ass car.
And I liked it so much that I included not
it because I couldn't find a photo of it, but
I included this type of car, so you probably know
it because you're smarty about cars. This is a chocolate
brown Lincoln Phaantin. Have you heard of that?
Speaker 2 (28:55):
Oh yeah, I've heard of that for sure.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
I just wanted to show it to you. I mean,
this car, and not to talk about her looks, but
she would have looked gorgeous in this car, and she
had a driver much of the time. I mean, this
is what I mean by later on when we have
witnesses to different things. She would have stood out on
so many different levels. And I know that this is
still Hollywood, but this was a beautiful car.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
Yeah. No, that's a head turner. If Thelma's a head turner.
So of course you know she's you know, she's driving
around in a vehicle like this. She's not trying to
be discreet, you know that, she's like here, I am Okay.
Speaker 1 (29:29):
May sees her car. She is alarmed because she couldn't
find Thelma anywhere else. She looks inside the car, and
this is where we see Thelma's body. May does not
examine her at all. She just sees her slumped over,
and she gets very upset. Of course, she runs down
to the cafe, flying down those steep steps. She finds
(29:51):
a general manager. He calls the police. So this is
all Monday morning, and she was last seen Saturday night
as far as we know right now. So I can
tell you what her body looked like. But I also
can immediately talk about the autopsy too.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
So you tell me.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
I know you like autopsy stuff, but what do you think.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
Yeah, well, let's uh, let's get into the crime scene
first in terms of understanding her body in context, you know,
in sits you in the back of this car, and
then go into the autopsy.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
So she has found slumped over the steering wheel. We
find out that her nose is broken and she was
bleeding from the mouth, but police think it's because she
passed out and hit her face against the steering wheel.
I think one of the reasons is, this is an
interesting bit here. May said the garage was closed and
(30:47):
that when she saw Thelma and she saw, you know,
a little bit of bleeding and she's laying over the
steering wheel, that she was unusually red. Her face was
really red. Let's kind of of start there. They're not
saying trauma, and their immediate response is not this is
you know, somebody who's been beaten up. But what do
(31:08):
you kind of think so far the way that I've
laid it out, or do you need more info?
Speaker 2 (31:12):
Well, I think with sort of the thumbnail sketch, broken nose,
bleeding out of the mouth, which you know possibly can
occur as a result of you know, the trauma to
the nose, in terms of evaluating the fracture to the nose,
you know, is you know, how much damage is truly there?
Is it consistent with somebody who's just now passes out
(31:35):
and nose hits a hard steering wheel or is there
more damage to that, And so that'd be something that
would be determined at autopsy, as well as what other
injuries she has on her body. You know, the red
kind of it sounds like her face is flush, and
you know, there's a variety of reasons why that can occur.
(31:56):
You know, one of the first things, just due to
the context of where she's found out in a car
inside a closed garage, is is it possible that there's
a carbon monoxide poisoning accidental? Potentially? You know, she was
sitting in that that car for too long? Is the
car still running when may you know, enters in? Does
(32:18):
she detect something's wrong? Is a car completely out of
gas but the ignition is turd like it's still running?
You know, then that might suggest that you know, she
for whatever reason, drove into the garage, closed the garage
and stayed in there too long and then ultimately succumbed
to carbon monoxide. So there's that aspect, you know, is
there potentially does the heart condition weigh in? Is there
(32:42):
a circulatory type of issue that's causing the red flushing?
And then of course there's there's different acts of islence
such as strangulation, you know, which could cause that that
red flushing. So at this point, I think, you know,
the investigators are, they're evaluating what's going on. It. It
is unusual to see a homicide victim just seated in
(33:05):
a car, slumped over the steering wheel, if it's not
a gunshot victim. You know, we often see that today
with shootings. But I'm assuming right now she's not a
gunshot victim or a stabbing victim or something like that.
And so now they're assessing things and reconstructing, and they're
probably going this very likely could just be an accidental
(33:27):
death or could be a natural if she had if
the heart condition weighed in as to the reason why
she ended up deceased inside this vehicle.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
Yeah, and I think there's a lot of speculation about that.
Was it the heart condition that contributed to this? Did
she climb up all of those stairs herself? And then
something happened she got into the car. So let me
just tell you a couple of facts that are important
and then we can get to the autop seat. Number One.
May saw Thelma Saturday night before she went to an event,
(33:59):
and she said she's wearing the same clothing she was
wearing a mauve and silver dress and a mink coat
and lots of expensive jewelry. She had an expensive handbag
with her. None of it was touched. It's all there,
so you know at first blush. She's been there since
Saturday night, early Sunday morning, whenever you know she left
(34:22):
this event. So they're trying to get a timeline together,
but that's going to come into questions soon. The other
note is that police do find the key in the
ignition to her fancy car. It was turned to the
on position, but the car was not running. So this
is out of my pay grade. So I'm just going
(34:43):
to tell you what it is and you can tell
me what you think. This is a combustible engine, so
there is no catalytic converter. I don't even know what
that was. I didn't until I had to pay for one,
and then I found out really quick witted.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
Expensive because of the precious metals inside there.
Speaker 1 (34:57):
I mean, I think it's the worst thing you can
pay for. So I can think my kids for all
the driving with them with a new catlet converter. He said,
how did you put this many miles on this car?
It's only a couple of years old. So the police
say that this is because the car's engine, because it's
a combustible engine, needs oxygen to run. So if something
(35:17):
happens and the car has turned on, once the garage
is filled up with carbon monoxide, there's no more oxygen
and the engine would just cut off. Does that sound right?
Speaker 2 (35:27):
Yes, it does.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
What happens now with the engine? First of all, what
kind of engines do we have?
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Now?
Speaker 1 (35:32):
I know we should know that I should know that.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
It's the same, you know, in terms of for gasoline engines.
In essence, they're just combustion engines, and so you know,
they're fundamentally operate the same way as this particular engine,
just obviously more advanced. You need oxygen for fire. Well,
that's in essence what happens inside the cylinder of you know,
(35:56):
one of the chambers within these engines, and you know this,
this particular car possibly had anywhere from eight to twelve cylinders,
and there's a spark plug in each cylinder, and then
there's a source of fuel that sprays into the cylinder,
and so now you have this gas vapor and then
(36:16):
as the cylinder comes up and compresses that gas, there's
a spark from the spark plug that ignites the gas
and in order for that gas to actually combust to
produce pressure to force the cylinder down, which ultimately is
the mechanism that is translated into being able to move
(36:37):
the vehicle. Once there's no oxygen, that combustion engine can't
operate anymore. So if that garage filled up with sufficient
carbon monoxide, I would say, yeah, theoretically, it's possible that
the engine just died and had been left running for
a period of time.
Speaker 1 (36:55):
Okay, well, let's keep that in mind, because you know,
there are a lot of theories that are going to
be flowing around nineteen thirty five LA. Pretty soon. There
is someone who comes, a doctor who comes and examines
her body. His name is JP Sampson. When doctor Sampson
looks at Thelma's body, he says, she has been dead
for about twelve hours. Now. I don't know how he
(37:19):
determines that. I don't think they use liver temperature, but
maybe it was rigor. But just doing math, let's say
this happens at nine am. That puts her death at
nine pm Sunday night. But she's wearing the clothes from
Saturday night.
Speaker 2 (37:35):
So you know, one of the things I want to
address about her clothes. You know, may sees her leaving
Saturday night in those clothes. What we don't know is
it possible that she stayed in those clothes alive for
how long period of time? More did she redress into
(37:56):
those clothes, you know? And those are the clothes she
came back to Roland's place in this vehicle. So it's
kind of hard to draw a firm conclusion that whatever
happened to Thelma happened Saturday night because we just don't
know anything about her state of dress, and you know
(38:17):
how long she had those clothes on before she ended
up dying. So it's interesting it. I would say, what
you could conclude as well, she did not get back
to her residence or a location where she had closed
that she would be wanting to change into, you know,
that would be part of it. To try to timeline
exactly when something happened to Thelma based on her dress
(38:40):
would be tough.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
Yes, I have had times in my youth where I
have been in the same clothing for six years and
I wasn't camping, I was living in New York, So yes,
well we'll see I don't trust the twelve hour timeline either.
I guess we'll just see how this progresses well.
Speaker 2 (38:58):
And even the pathologist saying she's been dead for twelve hours,
that's just a rough rough guess.
Speaker 1 (39:05):
So we've got the autopsy. Thelma's brain and organs are
described in the autopsy report as scarlet red of blood,
and her body is also discolored red. Her blood is
found to have a seventy five to eighty percent saturation
of carbon monoxide, which.
Speaker 2 (39:25):
Is classic, you know, this is when you see somebody
like this and at autopsy the pathologist is immediately going, okay,
we've got carbon monoxide. You know, this is even before
there's any type of toxicology testing going on. It's that
this is almost diagnostic, you know. And the question is
is you know, at this point, okay, is this is
(39:47):
it accidental? Is it natural? Or is there a chance
that there is violence inflicted on her to a point
to where she is unconscious and is left inside this
garage and now the carbon monoxide is building up from
the running car and then she succumbs to the carbon
monoxide poisoning. But the reality is is that there was
(40:11):
a violent act at the hands of another you know,
so too early to really draw a conclusion, but most
certainly at this point unless you tell me of other
significant injuries to her. At this point, carbon monoxide sounds
like the primary cause of death.
Speaker 1 (40:27):
Yes, and there are no other significant injuries other than
what I had mentioned before, a little bleeding at the
mouth and a broken nose, which investigators conclude very quickly
is because you know, when carbon monoxide started to take effect,
that her face hit the steering wheel, which would have
been a very heavy steering wheel, would probably or mahoggitting,
(40:49):
I don't know what it would have been, and broke
her nose. The question I think that is going to
come as is this suicide? Is this an accident? How
would this have been an accident? Or is this something else?
Because there are a lot of complicated things happening.
Speaker 2 (41:03):
Right now, it appears that the medical findings aren't differentiating
the manner of death. So there is no sign of strangulation,
there's no defensive injuries obviously I've already asked, there's no
stab wounds, no gunshot wounds, etc. So fundamentally, you've got
(41:24):
a fractured nose, bleeding out of the mouth, and carbon
monoxide poisoning. Basically, all types of manners of death potentially
are on the table, though homicide kind of becomes less
likely but not eliminated. Based on these circumstances.
Speaker 1 (41:42):
I'm going to talk in a little bit about what
she did that night, who she was with, and the
circumstances about why homicide definitely needs to stay on the table.
The corner, so there was doctor Sampson, but there's also
a corner, separate person who said after his examination and
that Thelma had been dead more like thirty hours when
(42:04):
she was found, which of course is much closer to
the Saturday night mark. Again, what's reliable here and what isn't.
I don't have notes on what they were using. I
think it was probably rigor. I don't think they were
using liver temperature at this point.
Speaker 2 (42:19):
You know, rigor would be part of it. You know,
that's one of the first things that the pathologists are
going to note in terms of how long the body
has been dead, you know, the body temperature. You know,
this was occurring mid December, you know, but you're also
dealing with la you know, on the coastal front there.
You know, it's maybe seventy degrees in the winter time
at times. You know, it's not excessively hot, it's not
(42:41):
excessively cold. My assessment what I would want to be
taking a look at. You know, they're drawing a conclusion
that she hit her nose on the steering wheel. If
that's what happened, you know, you imagine her head going forward.
She's basically collapsing and probably doesn't revive after that point. Right, So, now,
are the blood flows out of the nose, the blood
(43:04):
patterns inside the vehicle consistent with that last movement of
her body that caused the bleeding to occur, or is
there blood in discrete locations that would not line up
with this idea of just slumping forward, as if she
let's say, somebody punched her in the nose, she gets
knocked out, and then that person puts her into a
(43:27):
seated position in the driver's seat, you know, and leaves
the vehicle running inside this closed garage. That's where now
you have to start really paying attention to the details.
And I'm not sure you have those details.
Speaker 1 (43:39):
Well, let's see, we do have a lot of information
about what she did that night, and you're right, like
more theories and maybe a little bit more information do
you think that carbon monoxide poisoning would throw off time
of death estimations at all or.
Speaker 2 (43:53):
No, generally not. Now, part of what you know we
look at at a crime scene is lividity. Blood settles
with gravity. After you die, your heart is no longer pumping,
and so as Thelma is seated there slumped over, heart stops.
Blood settles to the lower parts of her body, showing
(44:14):
the position that she's in. That lividity is something that
I would be paying attention to to see had she
laid in a position different than the position that she
is ultimately found in. Lividity sets after a certain period
of time, So if somebody has moved prior to the
lividity setting, then the lividity the blood shifts inside the
(44:36):
body and so the original lividity pattern is changed. But
once the lividity pattern sets, when the body's moved from
the time that they die to the time that they
ultimately are found, the libidity will show that. And the
extent of the lividity is possibly something the pathologists may
(44:57):
be relying upon to get a better sense in terms
of of how long somebody's been dead under select circumstances,
the carbon monoxide poisoning can make it tougher to see
the faint lividity aspects just because of the coloration due
to the carbon monoxide. Various decomposational processes are occurring, and
(45:17):
if she's been dead for thirty hours, it's possible you
could start to see some of like her veins become
darker as the bacteria are starting to decompose the blood
inside the veins, they become very prominent looking. This is
what we call marbling, and that possibly can occur within
(45:37):
that thirty hour period of time. Or you could start
to see the dissension of the you know, the bloating
of the abdomen, you know, as the gases from the
gut bacteria start to build up, or you get a
greenish tinge to the abdomen. You know, this is indicating
that she's probably been dead longer than twelve hours. So
the pathologist, if he's doing proper documentation in his autopsy report,
(46:01):
if he's saying she's been dead for thirty hours, then
he should be listing the characteristics that he is observing
to come to that opinion.
Speaker 1 (46:10):
Well, as we wrap up this first episode, I'm going
to talk about why this is a two parter because
there were a lot of suspicions about her death. There
were a lot of things that investigators thought were really odd,
and her mother really thought was odd. So Number one,
we've already noted that her car is parked in the
(46:31):
garage at the top of this massive hill, and I
will give you a hint for the next episode. She
did not drive it. She had a driver who took
her to an event and then took her and dropped
her off at three am at her apartment. Oh right,
And her car had been at Roland's house up the
(46:52):
hill all day. She just didn't want to deal with driving,
and she had a driver, you know, take her places
that day. Her mother says that there is no way
at three in the morning she climbed the steps that
would have just taken her out completely. She had never
done it before to get up to Roland's house. How
did she get up to Roland's house? And she's also
(47:12):
had some threats in the last couple of months, so
there's a lot happening with this story.
Speaker 2 (47:18):
Yeah, so the plot thickens.
Speaker 1 (47:20):
Mary stole that from some hard boiled detective novel you read.
Have you ever said that in real life? The plot thickens.
Speaker 2 (47:30):
No, not that I can recall except now.
Speaker 1 (47:33):
Okay, So next week we will talk more about that
absolutely fantastic Thelmatod and the tragedy that is her death,
whatever happened to her.
Speaker 2 (47:43):
Hopefully, by the end of the next episode we will
get to the bottom of this.
Speaker 1 (47:47):
I hope so too. I will see you next week.
Speaker 2 (47:49):
All right, kay, thank you. Thanks.
Speaker 1 (47:55):
This has been an exactly right production for.
Speaker 2 (47:58):
Our sources and show notes go to a exactly wrightmedia
dot com slash Buried Bones sources.
Speaker 1 (48:03):
Our senior producer is Alexis Emosi.
Speaker 2 (48:06):
Research by Maren mcclashan, Ali Elkin, and Kate Winkler Dawson.
Speaker 1 (48:10):
Our mixing engineer is Ben Tolliday.
Speaker 2 (48:13):
Our theme song is by Tom Bryfogel.
Speaker 1 (48:15):
Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac.
Speaker 2 (48:18):
Executive produced by Karen Kilgaroff, Georgia hard Stark, and Daniel Kramer.
Speaker 1 (48:22):
You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at
Buried Bones Pod.
Speaker 2 (48:27):
Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked, a Gilded
Age story of murder and the race to decode the
criminal mind, is available now.
Speaker 1 (48:34):
And Paul's best selling memoir Unmasked My Life Solving America's
cold cases is also available now.
Speaker 2 (48:41):
Listen to Buried Bones on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hosts And Creators
Kate Winkler Dawson
Paul Holes
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