Marcia Clark: Trial by Ambush

It’s been 30 years since the infamous OJ Simpson trial, and the lead prosecutor Marcia Clark has had quite a career since then. She writes fiction and nonfiction books, including the one we’ll talk about today. It’s called Trial by Ambush and it’s a story about a young woman in Burbank, California. In 1953, Barbara Graham was caught-up in a robbery scheme that turned deadly. Marcia Clark investigates the sexism and, ultimately, the tragedy of this case. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
It doesn't matter that you didn't take part in the murder.
If you were at the scene at all doing anything
twiddling your thumbs, you're guilty of murder.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor
in Austin, Texas. I'm also the co host of the
podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right, and throughout my career,
research for my many audio and book projects has taken
me around the world. On Wicked Words, I sit down
with the people I've met along the way, amazing writers, journalists, filmmakers,

(00:48):
and podcasters who have investigated and reported on notorious true
crime cases. This is about the choices writers make, both
good and bad, and it's a deep dive into the
published details behind their stories. It's been thirty years since
the infamous OJ Simpson trial, and the lead prosecutor, Marcia Clark,

(01:10):
has had quite a career since then. She writes fiction
and nonfiction books, including the one we'll talk about today.
It's called Trial by Ambush, and it's a story about
a young woman in Burbank, California, in nineteen fifty three,
Barbara Graham was caught up in a robbery scheme that
turned deadly. Marcia Clark investigates the sexism and ultimately the

(01:32):
tragedy of this case. I would be remiss to not
say it has been thirty years since OJ Simpson. Can
you believe? First of all, it doesn't. I can't even
look at you and say, this looks like someone who
prosecuted probably the biggest case in the United States, you know,
and thirty years ago. Is this something you think about

(01:53):
a lot?

Speaker 2 (01:54):
No? And I and no, I mean it does occur
to me though, you know, like you said, thirty years ago,
No way, you know. I mean, it's very hard to
wreap my arms around that. It doesn't feel like it's
been thirty years. At the same time, it feels like
it's been one hundred years. It's hard to undersquare that circle.

Speaker 1 (02:12):
Well, I will say, you've had such an impressive post
OJ career, and I'm not sure everybody can say the
same thing. I had wondered what you would do after OJ,
after watching you for so long, and I had thought, well,
maybe you'll do you know, the kind of the usual
thing Court TV or whatever was happening in nineteen ninety five.
I don't really remember because you had so much experience

(02:34):
before you had done the Rebecca Schaeffer trial of stalking,
which I will say for my generation I'm fifty, that
is what I remember. I know a lot of people
remember Reagan almost dying in an assassination, but this really
Rebecca Schaeffer, to me, was so traumatizing a young actress
being gunned down. Will you tell me just a little
bit about that? And then you know you you go

(02:56):
on to Oj Simpson and then it's you're done. After that,
you're doing so much other So Becky Shaver was.

Speaker 2 (03:01):
A real heartbreaker. She was on the brink of stardom.
She was in this sitcom with Pam Daughter called My
Sister Sam, and she was lovely, you know, she was
really talented, very beautiful, and a stalker became entranced with her,
as they did, especially back then, because there were so
few guardrails, and he was able to get to her

(03:22):
simply by paying a private investigator to track her down
through the DMV, which can no longer be done, and
killed her. It was a super tragic killing. Talk about
the most innocent of victims. And he's now locked up
for life without the possibility of parole, and it did
help to spark a change in the laws that were

(03:42):
substantial raised public awareness, of course, of the dangers of stalking,
not just for celebrities but for everyone. You know, I
mean this kind of thing. Stocking cases were happening for
regular citizens who were not famous for many years, but
there were no laws that could really do anything to
punish You'll prevent the stalkers from acting out until someone

(04:06):
got really hurt. The laws changed since them, and people
can and do get arrested for stalking short of actually
trying to kill someone, which has really helped a great deal.
So there was that, and it was a few years
after that that Simpson happened. So by that time I'd
been a prosecutor for fourteen years and a defense attorney
before that for a few years. And after Simpson left

(04:28):
the DA's office and embarked on everything else.

Speaker 1 (04:32):
I do remember you saying, I'm assuming, specifically with Ojay
that the hellish part of the trial was the media
scrutiny and every and this was even before social media.
Can you imagine if this had happened what it would
have been like for you in the times of social
media and podcasts and everything else.

Speaker 2 (04:48):
No, and every time I do kind of think about that,
I have to tell you it just makes me cringe
the thought of it. All we had back then, you'll laugh,
was a fax machine in the main office. That's it,
one facts machine and it blew up every day. I
mean it broke down because people have facs in their notes, ideas, opinions.

(05:11):
It was hilarious. And then they had a whee tip
line for the police and that thing got blown up
as well. So imagine that there were social media. No,
I don't. I don't even go there, as if my
mind just shuts down.

Speaker 1 (05:27):
Okay, I want to transition over to your second now
nonfiction book, which is, you know, a really interesting story.
What I love about it is you are doing what
you know I have always tried to do. Is I'm
looking for the women in the story, the strong characters.
And you have a victim who is a woman. You
have you know, one of the people who goes on trial,

(05:48):
the main person in your book who is a woman.
And I think you explore a lot of really interesting things.
To transition over to talking about this, I do remember
quite a few articles just about how you were asked
in Oja time to change your looks, change everything. I'm
assuming to not sound like, you know, some bitchy wife

(06:10):
that is going to you know, drive men crazy who
were watching you. Was that kind of the impression you
got or what? What was it all?

Speaker 2 (06:17):
It was an effort to neutralize me so I wouldn't
seem so tough. That was the issue. And so dressing
pastels and you know, and talk softly and smile more
smile was a big one. So really, this is a
double homicide. These people were brutally murdered and you want
me to smile. It is not a dinner party, hits

(06:39):
a murder trial. And so it was kind of crazy
because they were so concerned that a woman in particular
would be negatively perceived if she was simply standing her
ground and presenting a murder case without apologizing and curtseying
through it. It was a bizarre situation to say the least.

(06:59):
And yeah, it really was kind of a callback to
the fifties with Barbara Graham, who was probably told the
same thing. I have to assume she dressed in tight
skirt suits and she had her hair up in a bond.
She was very appropriate looking honestly, but she was beautiful.
And the tight skirt suits, which were the style back then,
with high heels, that's how women dressed. That wasn't like

(07:23):
a showgirl. Somebody, one of the reporters said she looked
more like a showgirl than a defendant. Well, she's very pretty,
and she's petite and blah blah blah and all that stuff,
and so she looked great, but she wasn't dressed like
a librarian as we I don't know why we say
that libraries don't dress like that either, but you know
what I mean when I say that. So it's a

(07:44):
handy little tag. But you know, no hibnick louses, and
she wore makeup, and she did you know, she looked good.
And they probably did tell her to tone it down.
They probably did probably try and get her to maybe
wear her version of sackcloth, but she wasn't in time
to do that. And I think if they even did
tell her to, she wasn't inclined to. And I think

(08:04):
in a way, dressing up and dressing nicely was a
kind of armor for her, you know, made her feel
more protected and more pulled together and girded for battles.

Speaker 1 (08:14):
So to speak. And I think what gets complicated is
and I know that this is something that floats around
your book to the label of fem fatale, which drives
me out of my mind. I think it is so
dismissive and just obviously very sexist. But when you say it, you,
I think, can conjure up exactly what we're talking about.
So do you think that that was a label that

(08:35):
was put on Barbara? And then we need to get
into the story.

Speaker 2 (08:38):
Yeah, I do. It was a definite label that got
put on Barbara. I think it was really interesting that
that was the way they went with her, and it
played into this kind of stereotype that is a killer
female that frightens men because she's so she's such a
not just a ballbuster, but she's also a seductress and
a temptress and she'll wrap her wiles around you and

(09:01):
you know, do god knows what, and then ultimately destroy you.
And they played into that and they deemed her. It
labeled her as Bloody Babs. That was the prosecutors who
started that ball rolling. She was called Bloody Babs. She
was a demon, she was a villainous, she was a murderist,
and they went overboard. They cracked open every thestorus on

(09:23):
the table to go after her with every adjective you
can imagine, all of which was derogatory, all of which
was misogynistic. It was an extreme that was actually even
by today's standards, which I don't consider all that great,
it was shocking. It does show that we have come
some distance from those days. Not completely. We're not all

(09:43):
the way there, but we are certainly better off today.
At least we're aware of this kind of thing. Back then,
they never even talked about it. Today, you and I
are discussing how misogynistic it was and how unfair it was,
and the way they demonized her was hideous. They didn't
even think to mention it. Back then. It was just
so accepted as something that they could do and should do.

Speaker 1 (10:03):
Do you think that a judge these days would admonish
the prosecutor if he used any KINI or she used
any kind of moniker like that? Or does it kind
of depend on where you are?

Speaker 2 (10:13):
Well, it might depend on where you are. You know,
every courtroom is a different is a different experiment, and
regions matter. What might fly in Texas won't fly in Oregon.
That kind of thing, though, I think overall, even so,
the level is higher today than it was. So while
there probably are big variations in where you are in

(10:34):
the United States or even within California, for example, there's
a certain level past which I think judges would not
allow you to go in terms of what you call
a defendant and how you frame up a defendant to
the jury.

Speaker 1 (10:47):
Okay, let's get into the story. So we are in Burbank, California,
nineteen fifty three. Can you just give me an overall,
where are we in history or are we at war
with anyone?

Speaker 3 (10:57):
What's happening in the United States World War two? Things
are relatively prosperous and relatively calm. It's at that time
we haven't yet gotten into the Vietnam War, the draft
and all of that. Relatively speaking, things are pretty calm
on the domestic front. And you know, just looking at
what the cost of things were back then, you know,

(11:18):
it was crazy.

Speaker 2 (11:19):
A nickel for a phone call and a payphone member. Payphones,
they were ubiquitous back then. The Burbank neighborhood where the
victim lived, Mabel Monahan, was your typical. It almost could
pass for a Midwestern town. Very quiet, very lovely family, neighborhood, peaceful.
There's a little neighborhood store tucked into one of the

(11:42):
streets where you could send your nine year old child
to go and pick up groceries for you or you know,
gallon of milk. It was the days of where the
old sitcoms came from Andy of Maybury and that sort
of thing. That's what it was like. And so the
notion that a heinous home invasion, robbery murder would take
place in a neighborhood like that was unthinkable. It had

(12:05):
never happened, and it stunned the community, it stunned the country.
It became national news because it was such an outrageous
thing to happen in a place like that.

Speaker 1 (12:15):
So Mabel in this case is our victim. I'll just
say a little side note. I've read a couple of
times that she's referred as an elderly widow and she's
sixty four.

Speaker 2 (12:25):
Bug off the life expectancy, you know, I mean back then,
sixty four it was like you're done good, back on
the wheel hole.

Speaker 1 (12:34):
Gosh.

Speaker 2 (12:35):
I noticed that too.

Speaker 1 (12:36):
That drove me crazy.

Speaker 2 (12:38):
And she was a trip. Though. Mabel Monahan was a
cool lady. She had been a vaudeville trooper. She was
a roller skater, and that's how she met her husband.
He was also on the vaudeville sergate. He was a
roller and ice skater. They became a dynamic duo. There
was this rendering of them doing one of their stunts
where he holds her by a piece of rope in

(12:58):
his mouth that she holds on with her mouth and
they're spinning around and she's spinning through the air. It's
an amazing thing. So she was really cool, and then
she wound up in Burbank purely by accident. She had
a daughter named Iris. She was also a performer, and
her daughter ultimately auditioned for a floor show at a

(13:18):
place called Ships, which was a converted yacht really or
a cruise ship that was worn off of the Santa
Monica Peer and it was during the prohibition days, and
they have speakeasy downstairs, and Iris auditioned for the for
the floor show, and she got hired by the owner
of Ships, who was also into the speakeasy and selling

(13:41):
booze Tutor Sharer, and Tutor Sharer was quite the dashing man,
entrepreneur man about town. They got married ultimately and he
did very well. He was into the gambling business as well,
but he was seeing that Nikki Cohen, the ultimate gangster
of that time, was controlling Los Angeles and that if

(14:01):
he didn't get out and let Niki Cohen do his
thing in Los Angeles, he was going to wind up dead.
So Tudor Sharer decamped to Las Vegas and opened up
a casino there, became a real estate entrepreneur, did very well,
very successful, but he was not quite as successful well.
He was too successful with the ladies and iris. After
thirteen years of marriage, which were very rocky thirteen years,

(14:25):
decided to divorce him. He didn't blame her. It settled
her nicely with a lot of money, jewelry and the
house in Burbank. She didn't want the house and so
she gave it to her mother, Mabel, and Tutor Sharer
and Mabel were very close. They liked each other a lot,
and he kind of figured she'd wind up with the
house that he was happy about that. So Mabel winds

(14:46):
up living in a house in Burbank. She had never
lived in a house before. She was used to living
in hotels across the country, so she was very security
conscious because now it was up to her. There was
no front door desk, nobody else manning the front was
all her, and they were all these entries and back
doors and things to manage. So she became notorious for
her security conscious ways. So ironically she wound up in

(15:10):
this situation. So it became known though that Tutor share
and she remained friendly, and that Tutor whenever he came
through from Las Vegas, would stop to visit her in Burbank,
and a rumor started among the criminal element in Los
Angeles that he was stashing money that he would siphon
off of the casinos to hide it from the irs,
and it would be stashed in the safe in her

(15:30):
Burbank house. They decided then that they had cased the
place a number of times, thinking, you know, it's just
an old lady. We could knock her over easy, and
they had thought about it and thought about it, but
hadn't done it over the period of a couple of years.
Because she was security conscious. They had to make sure
they could get into the house, couldn't necessarily decide determine
when she was home and not, so they'd have to

(15:52):
get her to open the door. If she was home,
too much work, so they didn't do it. But then
ultimately the bad guys in this case, one of whom
was Barbara's dear friend Emmett Perkins, who ran gambling houses
around Los Angeles, and she worked as his dice girl
that's basically a shill, and she would get men to
spend their money there. And what she would do is

(16:13):
go to these nice hotel bars and they would see
your pretty girls drinking alone, and then she would get
to talk to them and they'd want to go somewhere private,
and she'd say, well, on the way, why don't we
stop here, and here would be the gambling house, and
she would help them part with their money. So she
was very close with EMMITTT. Perkins. She worked for him.
And then a few months before this murder happened, Emmett

(16:35):
perkins good buddy Jack Santos showed up at the gambling house.
She met Jack Santos. Then they decided, you know what,
we know how we can get into Mabel Monahan's house.
We'll use Barbara. Barbara will be the decoy. She'll go
knock on the door. And Barbara was petite and very
unthreatening and just say I'm sorry, my car broke down.

(16:56):
Could I please use your phone? You know there were
no cell phones, and that's how Barbara become involved.

Speaker 1 (17:01):
Is this a good time to talk about Barbara's personal
background or do you want to get through what happens
with Mabel and then talk about It's up to you.

Speaker 2 (17:11):
This is a good time. So Barbara had had one
of the hardest knock lives that were possible for someone
who was not an addict. She was the first born
to her mother, never knew her father. Her mother hated
her basically from birth. Whether that was because her mother
was raped or because she just didn't want to be

(17:32):
a mother, I don't know. But Barbara was somebody that
got foisted off on neighbors and friends and family and
pure strangers from almost birth. Her mother went on to
have two more children again father's unknown. Those children got
treated a little better, but Barbara eventually wound up. She
made it I think through eighth grade, but of course

(17:54):
fell in with a bad crowd. And by a bad crowd,
I just mean smoking, occasionally drinking and cutting class is
playing hooky. This was up in the Bay Area. They
take the ferry into San Francisco and get into trouble.
I mean it its teenage stuff. Nevertheless, eventually it came
to the attention of the authorities. She was truant, and

(18:14):
eventually she went from one place to another. At one
point she was in a convent, and you would think
that someone who was used to flouting all rules would
hate a convent, but Barbara was very happy there. She
loved the sisters, thought they were wonderful. They treated her
very well, probably the best time of her childhood. But
that couldn't last because the state stopped paying her mother

(18:35):
for taking care of because the women, I think a
single mother back then was entitled to some kind of stipend,
and if the sisters were taking care of Barbara, she
wasn't getting it. So she took her out of the convent,
where she was once again being thrown around and treated
like garbage. And so she wound up being taken into
the reform school of the Venturist School for Girls. This
was a notorious hell for young girls, and the mother

(19:00):
knew it because she had been confined in the Venturia
School for Girls herself for a period of a couple
of years, so she knew better. And they had been
written up a number of times for their draconian disciplinary measures,
some of which really sounded like waterboard and absolute torture.
Barbara would run away from them. Repeatedly. She'd run back
home and beg her mother to let her stay home.

(19:22):
Her mother would call the cops and have her hauled
off in handcuffs every time. Eventually they just let her
age out of the school, and at sixteen she was
on the street. She became a seagull as they call it,
which is the young girls, young women who would hang
around with the sailors at port, and there she kind
of got in with the crowd that suited her. These
were all people who were not bad people. These were

(19:44):
people who kind of were rootless, no particular ties. She had,
of course, no skills. They helped her, she helped them.
There was some check hiding, some shoplifting, but it was
all fringy crime like that misdemeanor stuff that is pretty
typical of a young person who has no skills and

(20:04):
no way of making a legitimate living. She tried to
as a waitress periodically, but that was a fitful experience
for her, which is why she wound up being a
dice girl. Now, in the course of all of her
doings up there, she wound up with a lot of
friends who were on the wrong side of the law,
which is exactly what you'd expect given the way she

(20:25):
was living from hand to mouth. And at one point
a couple of friends of hers decided to rob a
famous madam up in San Francisco, and in the course
of the robbery, the madam hollered out the window, which
brought the cops running, and the robbers got caught within
ten seconds. One of them asked Barbara to be his alibi.
Barbara would do anything for her friend because her friends

(20:47):
were all she had. So she was primarily loyal to
her friends, and that's all that she could be loyal to,
because that's all she had in her life. So she
gave him an alibi, testified for him that he was
with her. Of course, foolishly, she was inside in Chicago
at the time, and the prosecutors found out within ten
seconds that she was lying. She was probably in Chicago

(21:07):
when she said she was in the Bay area, and
so she got convicted of perjury. She did very little time,
but that perjury conviction would haunt her. So that was
the past she brought with her. Now just before. Within
a couple of years before the murder, she met her husband.
And she met him because he was the bartender at
one of the bars, the hotel bars that she would

(21:28):
go to to pick up men to bring them to
the gambling hole. He was a nice guy, Hank was,
and he was using his bartending gig to hook up
men with women, so he had a side gig as well,
and it was a match made in heaven. For some reason,
he was the one she really fell for. She had
been married three times, she'd had kids with two of

(21:48):
the husbands, left them behind with the mother in law,
never really was attached to anyone, but Hank was the
one she fell for and really loved him. They wound
up having a son named Tommy. At first, life was wonderful,
but of course when she got pregnant, she couldn't be
a dice girl anymore. Unfortunately, Hank turned out to be
not just a nice guy who was a bartender. He

(22:10):
turned out to be a nice guy who was a
bartender and also a junkie. And he stopped working and
Barbara had no money. She didn't have money to feed
her or Hank or the baby, and times were getting desperate.
The shoplifting wasn't covering it, bad checks weren't covering it.
Eventually she had to go back to work as a
dice girl, but their marriage was on the rocks because
of the constant fighting over the fact that Hank just

(22:32):
wanted to get high lots of pressure there. And so
when they asked Barbara to be there decoy, you can
see why circumstances were as dire as they were for her.
And she thought, Okay, I'll make a little money, get
the door open, and that's it. That would be her
whole part of the whole thing. And it didn't work
out that way.

Speaker 1 (22:52):
Let me go back and ask you a few questions
just so we get a really clear picture of Barbara,
because I know that's really important. In your book established
who she is, which is what any good defense attorney
would have done. You know, this is what led her
to this. The sources that I have read don't really
illuminate any of this. Did you find that too, that

(23:12):
sort of she is the fem fatale, the dangerous bad girl,
and that's the end of it. That a lot of
even now modern readers don't really want to hear about
her background. They kind of just want to hear about
what a dangerous woman she was.

Speaker 2 (23:27):
Well, I found that readers were actually really glad to
have that background. But that's today's readers we're not talking
about back then. Today's readers were very interested in, you know,
who she was and how she came to be in
this situation. But back then, it was the newspapers were
filled with nothing but the fem fatale, the villainous, the murderous,

(23:47):
the bloody babs of it all. That's all they wanted
to write about. Very little mention was made of the
hard knock life she had led that brought her to
this place. So no one really knew and I don't
think anyone really cared back then and what her history
really was. There was one other book written after that time.
There was a book written by one of the tabloid

(24:07):
reporters who became very close to the prosecutor, and he
collaborated on a book about the trial with the prosecutor.
But of course the bias was unbelievable in that book,
and in many respects it was completely unreliable and false.
So he did little to talk about Barbara's history. But
Kathleen Karen wrote a book that was in twenty thirteen

(24:28):
that I highly recommend called Proof of Guilt, and it
really focuses on the death penalty and particularly women who
were put to death or subjected to a sentence of death.
That's fascinating. And she talks a little bit about Barbara's
background in that, but RSUs a range of cases, not
just Barbara's case. When I decided to research this, I
reached out to all of these sources I could possibly find,

(24:51):
and because it's so old, there's no one really to
talk to who knew her. So I got very, very
lucky to find that Walter Wanger, who was a big
Hollywood producer back then, he produced the film that featured
this case, and it was all about Barbara Graham and
the case called I Want to Live. And it was
an Oscar winning film for Susan Hayward, who played Barbara Graham.

(25:13):
She won for Best Actress. In the course of preparing
for that filming, Walter Wanger gathered all of the letters
she'd written her lawyers that he could get a hold of,
and all of her background and the defense investigators reports.
He gathered this whole treasure trow of information that I
was able to draw on in order to pay the
much bigger, clearer picture of who Barbara was and that

(25:36):
was just a lucky break.

Speaker 1 (25:38):
How much when you were a prosecutor, would the offenders
a person who is going on trial, how much would
their background play into your decision of what they should
be charged with? You know what they're going to be
able to trial for, how to influence the jury, Like
what would you do with Barbara Graham?

Speaker 2 (25:54):
Now?

Speaker 1 (25:54):
As a prosecutor, do you think it.

Speaker 2 (25:56):
Does play a part? I think it's always important that
a prosecut look at the whole picture. If someone has
no priors whatsoever, you have to think about exactly what's
in play. But ultimately it is the facts of the case.
What did they do in this case, what's the law,
what the charges should be. When it comes to the
background of the defendant, that goes more towards sentencing than

(26:18):
it does toward a charging decision, though there are definitely
you can decide to charge someone. And I want to get
too far into the weeds with this, but there are
certain charging decisions that may have a bearing on history
of the defendant, but many of them do not. When
it comes to the death penalty, then it's a very
big consideration. The defendant's background is huge, and that is

(26:40):
something that you really have to pay attention to. Where
there other murders in his background, that's a big one.
Even if they were underprivileged, even if they did have
a very rocky childhood. If a prior murder is in
the offing, you have to think about that, and so
what kind of murder was it, you know, was it
a crime of opportunity, was it a serial killer? These
things all matter. So if it had been my decision

(27:02):
in terms of Barbara's charges, I would never have sought
the death penalty against her. Never with her background, the
misdemeanor nothing fringe kind of crimes of opportunity, you know, shoplifting,
check hiding, I would not have been pursuing the death
penalty at all. So that would have been the big difference.
Felony murder back then, there was a different rule. Felony

(27:23):
murder rule meant that if you were involved in the felony,
no matter what happened and how it went down, if
someone got killed, you were out on the hook for murder, period,
even if you were sitting in the lookout position outside.
And that was the law back then. So one if
there was a murder that went down, everyone went down
for the murder. That's no longer true, at least in California.

(27:44):
There are gradations in terms of your liability. So I
can't even say that, you know, how I would charge
her in terms of the rest of it, because that's
not fair. Certain things were not even on the table
back then. But I certainly, even by their standards back then,
would never have gone after the death Penalt.

Speaker 1 (28:00):
Well, let me see if I can catch us up
so we can get to Mabel's door. So we have Barbara,
who is a mother. She's pretty desperate. She goes back
into dice girl work. And then she's got two people
who say, let's, you know, break into this woman's house
and look for this money that's supposedly there. And we're
going to use Barbara as a decoy. And she seems
very clear on what she's supposed to do. What is

(28:22):
she specifically supposed to do when this happens.

Speaker 2 (28:25):
Now it's supposed to do anything but get her to
open the door and then keep her out of the way.
That's it. And the plan was sit her down on
the couch, sit next to her, and keep her quiet.
We'll do our thing and then we'll leave. And that
was it. So the burglary, the robbery, the murder goes down.
It gets discovered a day and a half later when

(28:46):
the gardener sees that Mabel's front door is ajar. This
is very rare. She keeps everything locked down tight. He
calls for her, calls for her, no answer. He pushes
the door further in and then sees that the whole
house has been turned up so down. There's blood on
the walls, the carpeting's been ripped up, the furniture's been
thrown around. He freaks out, calls a friend of his,

(29:07):
who happens to be a Burbank police officer. He shows up,
police officer walks inside, the gardener walks behind him, and
they go through and they find that Mabel has been
dragged down the hallway and left next to the linen closet,
a garage around her neck, and she's been beaten severely
about the face and head in a pool of blood.
They then call in the troops from Burbank PD and

(29:31):
the case begins to unfold, but they find that there
is no safe there. So, contrary to the rumors, no safe.
The whole house had been turned upside down. They had
even gone through everything in Mabel's closet. Every purse was
turned upside down except for one, and that was a
purse that was hanging on the hook, which turned out
to have hundreds of dollars in cash and jewelry, some

(29:52):
of the very expensive platinum and diamonds. So they have
no witnesses, no eyewitnesses, no ear witnesses, no fingerprints. Even then,
of course, back then there was no ring cameras, no CCTV.
There was nothing. And they don't even know why now
because it looks like they were supposedly ransacking the place,
but they left this purse full of everything there. So

(30:13):
it takes them quite a while. They reach out with
all of the sources they can find, They tap all
of the guys on the street and all of their
confidential informants, and no one's talking. No one's talking. And
then finally after a couple of weeks, and by now
the pressure has built enormously because people are up in arms.
They're terrified. Nothing like this has happened in this neighborhood
like ever. And finally they find someone named Baxter Shorter,

(30:36):
and he is their first witness involved in the actual
ring of burglars who committed the crime. To turn, he
gives them a statement under oath that is actually taken
down by a stenographer, and he tells the following that
he was tapped by Emmett Perkins and Jack Santos, Perkins
being Barber's buddy, Santos being perkins buddy. He was tapped

(30:57):
by them because they had heard the rumor about Tutor
Sharer leaving the money in the house, and Baxter Shorter
knew where she lived. They did not. They agree to
cut Baxter Shorter in for ten percent if he'll point
out the house and be the lookout. He thinks, all right,
fair enough, it's only ten percent, But then again, all
I have to do is sit outside, so he does.
On the night that's in question, they all meet at

(31:19):
the Smokehouse, which is a really great restaurant across the
street from the studios in Burbank, and they plot how
they're going to do this. At that point, four people
are involved. John True, who is a friend of Jack
Santos from up in Grass Valley. He's a deep sea diver.
Baxter Shorter, who's a safe cracker, and also the one
who knows where Mabel lives. EMMITTT. Perkins, Barbara's friend. He's

(31:41):
also a safe cracker, they call him a boxman, and
Jack Santos and then of course Barbara. So the five
of them go to Mabel Monahan's house after meeting at
the Smokehouse, and they sit outside. The plan is Barbara
goes to the door. First, she gets Mabel to open
the door, and then right behind her, John True should
go in and helps help keep Matebo out of the

(32:02):
way and then give them the high sign. When it's
all the coast is clear and they can come in.
And then Santo said, Perkins will go in and do
the search for the safe, break into the safe, et cetera.
So Barbara goes in and John True right behind her,
and then according to Baxter Shorter, he's waiting outside. He's
waiting outside. It's taking a really long time. Everyone's getting nervous,

(32:24):
and at Perkins goes, what is going on here? She
should be like sitting on a couch by now, what's
going on? Nobody has given them the high sign yet
he goes over to Jack Santos and said, what do
we do? Santo says, you go inside and gives him
a gun. You go find find out what's happening. Ultimately
they go in. Baxter Shorter is still sitting outside. They
go in. Some minutes later, Jack Santos comes outside, waves

(32:46):
him in and says, come and see there's nothing here
because he needs to prove two backster Shorter that there's
no ten percent to be had because nothing is found there.
And Baxter Shorter goes in and sees the bloody scene.
He freaks out and he says, look, we got to
help her. At that point, John True is sitting on
the floor with Mabel Monahan's head in her lap and
he's holding her down, and he says, look, we got

(33:08):
to help her. She's gonna die. What are we doing?
And nobody says anything. They ultimately leave a short time later,
and Baxter Shorter, as soon as he gets away from them,
runs to a payphone and calls for an ambulance, giving
the address of Parkside Avenue in Los Angeles. Unfortunately, there
is no Parkside Avenue in Los Angeles. There's only a

(33:29):
Parkside Avenue in Burbank. The ambulance never gets there. Mabel dies,
very likely as Jack Santos was telling Baxter. She was
already dead by the time they left the house. In
any case, Baxter was freaked out, but he tells the
DA everything, all of what I just told you, and
everything he said checked out. They did trace the call.
They managed to find the operator he spoke to that

(33:52):
got the ambulance to show up somewhere. I don't know
where the ambussob ultimately went. And after that, okay, they
have their star witness, Shorter terrific. They decided that, you
know what, Baxter, Shorter had better be kept quiet and
low and safe because these three, the rest of them
are still out and about. Baxter says, hey, if I disappear,

(34:13):
you know, they're going to know that whatever your reporting
came from me, because the reporters were all over the
case and reporting the story and all kinds of inside information,
especially the decoy part that Barbara went to the door
told me Abel Monahan that her car had broken down
and got able to open the door. Only someone involved
would know that. There's no one else, and so it

(34:35):
had to come from someone who was on the inside.
Now the rest of them are out in the world,
they're going to know. The only one who's not with
us is Baxter Shorter. He's got to be singing, but
he refused police protection. Although everyone, including the DA himself,
tried to get him to accept it. He said, no,
that'll be even worse. It'll be a big red flashing sign.
It's me, it's me. Maybe he was right, but he

(34:56):
wound up getting kidnapped at gunpoint by Emmett Perkins and
disappeared for good. So they've lost their star witness. This
leaves them with no way to crack the case, no testimony,
They have no one. Are they going to turn Barbara Well,
she's got a perjury conviction. Jack Santo's and Nanna Perkins
are already being suspected of having committed other murders up

(35:18):
north in the gold mining country, so they're not good.
The only one left was John True. They went up
to San Francisco. They pressured him, they locked him up
for days, had his friends come in and beg him,
and finally, with a promise of complete and full immunity
i e. He walked out the door. He agreed to
testify and that became their star witness. And that was

(35:38):
actually the worst thing they could have done, because John
True was a big liar. It was one of the
most ironic names I've ever ever heard, and I kept
calling him in the book the ironically name John True.
And he claimed that when he walked in behind Barbara,
he found Barbara holding Mabel Monahan by the neck and pistol,
whipping her repeatedly and the face and neck and the head,

(36:02):
and that he put his hand between her face and
Barbara's pistol and said, stop, stop, don't do that. Now.
Barbara is not a big woman. She's small. And even
though John True wasn't big, he's bigger than her. Did
he pull her off, No? Did he push her away? No?
He says he put his hand next to Mabel's face. Well,
that would have just jammed his hand into her face.
Nobody thought about the logistics of the stupid story he told.

(36:25):
For some reason, it was bizarre to me that no
one questioned it. And Barbara five foot two, one hundred
and twenty six pounds is going to control a woman
by the back of the neck with one hand. No
one thought about this. But what I also discovered was
that Barbara didn't have a gun, And so when you
put all of the statements together, that was a lie too.
But the jury never knew that because the jury never

(36:47):
heard Baxter Shorter's statement and never got to find out that. Actually,
the prosecution took a statement from John True when he
was up in San Francisco, and it had certain discrepancies
between that his testimony, which would have made him look
a great deal different than he looked for the jury.
By the time he got to sit on the witness
stand and paid a halo over his head, the prosecution

(37:10):
buried that first statements and the defense never got it,
never saw it. So a number of things happened to
skew the jury's version of the facts right up front
before anything else happened.

Speaker 1 (37:21):
So did Barbara take the stand.

Speaker 2 (37:23):
She had to. Ultimately she had to. Here's why. When
Barbara was in custody, she was befriended by a woman
named Donna Prow Or, as the press dubbed her, the
pretty little Donna prow Donna prowe became gave Barbara sweets
and chocolate and candy and did and gave her money
and knitted her what it knitted her a scard for something,

(37:46):
promised to knit her address for trial, ingratiated herself with
Barbara in every possible way. She could I bet you
can see this coming. Donna Prow was a plant. She
had been the lover. We believe. That's an opinion. It's
not been established, but it seems pretty clear, at least
in my opinion, that she was the girlfriend of Lieutenant

(38:09):
Robert Coveney of Burbank Police Department of long standing. She
had been his girlfriend before she went to jail. And
she went to jail because she got very drunk and
very stone and got behind the wheel of a car
and went careening down major streets, major league thoroughfares, and
wound up crashing head first into a car containing a

(38:30):
family of five, killing one, maiming the other four, for
which she got one year in jail and probation. Back then,
we did not take drunk driving seriously, so before that accident, though,
she was already tight with Lieutenant Coveney. When she got
busted for this drunk driving murderer, she called him up
for help and he gave a statement for her. He

(38:53):
was there for her, and she told the probation officer
he sadbody, that she would always be able to call
when she wasn't feeling well. Tenant Covenany when he puts
Barbara into the La County jail. Realizes, I've got an
ace in the hole here. Donna Prow's already in custody.
I'll use her to get to Barbara and persuade Barbara
to secure a false alibi from a plant. So he

(39:16):
set her up to persuade Barbara to talk to this
man named Sam. And this man named Sam was some
reported to be some underworld figure who for a price,
would give Barbara a false alibi for the murder of
Mabel Monaghan, and Barbara was very reluctant. There were letters
that went between them constantly leading up to this whole

(39:37):
scheme that showed Donna had been pressuring her to go
along with this, to do this, and meanwhile, at the
same time her lawyers pressuring her for an alibi as well, saying, look,
the felony murder ruled back then, it doesn't matter that
you didn't take part in the murder. If you were
at the scene at all, doing anything twiddling your thumbs,
you're guilty of murder and then you subject to the

(39:58):
death penalty. So you need an alibi. It's your only defense.
Lots of pressure put on her to come up with
an alibi and of course she couldn't because she was there.
So Barbara was getting pressured on all sides to come
up with an alibi. Donna tells her this man Sam,
you could trust him, I could trust him. I know
him well. Talk to him. He'll give you an alibi.

(40:19):
It's what you need. You have to do this, You
have to do this. Now, we don't know what Donna
wrote to Barbara because you're not allowed to pass notes
in jail, so Barbara would destroy all the notes. She
believed Donna was destroying her notes as well. Of course,
Donna was not doing that. Donna was turning over almost
all the notes that Barbara wrote to her to Lieutenant Coveney.

(40:40):
She didn't turn all of them over. She told Lieutenant
Coveny that some of them were too embarrassing because they
wound up she and Barbara wound up having an affair.
She said she was too embarrassed to share it all
with Lieutenant Coveney because they were so graphic. Whether that's
true or not, I'm very skeptical. I think that probably

(41:00):
a lot of the notes Don and was writing Barbara
were very high pressure about you've got to do this,
You've got to go with this guy. And the more
pressure does putting on Barbara, the less it looks like
this was Barbara's idea. They don't want that to come out.
They wanted to look like Barbara jumped at the chance
to lie about where she was consciousness of guilt. That's
what that shows. You're willing to lie in fabricated defense.

Speaker 1 (41:22):
Is that legal?

Speaker 2 (41:22):
Now?

Speaker 1 (41:23):
Can you do any of this now?

Speaker 2 (41:24):
No? Now, once you've been indicted, you represented by counsel.
You cannot be questioned by anybody who's a plant for
the police. Now, if you happen to be yapping by
yourself and somebody overhears it and reports it, that's a
different story. But you cannot be set up in this manner.
And Sam Siriani, who was the undercover cop who posed

(41:46):
as her false alibi witness, pressured the hell out of Barbara.
He is on tape. In part. The tape didn't work
real well because back then hitt and tape recorders were
not what they are today. But he pressured her constantly
said and admitted it that he was. You got to
tell me, you got to tell me where were you
were you with them? You've got to say it, say
it's say it, And he had to do that repeatedly

(42:08):
to get her to finally gave in and say yes,
I was there. So none of that would fly today.
What happens when she gets on the stand. So that
was dining Brook. They presented the bombshell witness who was
his undercover cop at the end of the prosecution's case,
and it was just all hell broke loose. Now she's
got to testify. What was she going to say, Well,
she's going to say that she was pressured into securing

(42:30):
a false alibi because she was terrified. True. That was true.
Between her lawyer most importantly and Donna, she was given
the distinct impression that she was dead meat unless she
came up with an alibi. She couldn't just say I
don't know where I was, which is what she had
been saying all along until she came in and went
for this false alibi, and she had to get up

(42:50):
on the sand and say that. And as it turned out,
they wound up finding a good alibi witness, purely by accident.
The neighbor that lived next door in this very small
duplaye was the perfect defense witness that you could ever
possibly imagine. This little girl and she had been crippled
by some form of polio or disease, and she had

(43:12):
to have her leg braces tightened or adjusted periodically, like
once a week. And so she could actually establish that
she was home on the night of the burglary murder
because she had been to a hospital appointment at a
certain point in time close to that and that she
heard Barbara and her husband arguing that night at home,
so Barbara couldn't have been at the crime scene and

(43:33):
she was unassailable. The prosecution went crazy trying to prove
that her records were wrong, the hospital records were wrong. Ultimately,
I think it wound up being a wash because no
one could figure out the hospital kept terrible records, was
a mess, and no one could tell. And had Barbara
not been suckered into the false alibi, she probably would

(43:54):
have gotten at least a hang jury and maybe acquitted,
because this little witness was so very entrancingly credible.

Speaker 1 (44:01):
But wrong, right but wrong.

Speaker 2 (44:04):
Yeah, but I think honestly believed it. You know, she
believed Barbara and they were home every night arguing, so
you can see where she would mistakenly believe she was
home that night as well.

Speaker 1 (44:14):
So Barbara's on the stand, and how is she described
by reporters?

Speaker 2 (44:17):
So Barbara's on the stand, cross examination with the prosecutor.
Jamiler Levy was an icon in the DA's office. You know,
everybody would oh, Jamiler Levy, he's amazing, and every time
we lost a case, we'd joke Jamiler Levy could have
won it. And I was really excited initially to read
the transcripts of this trial because you know, he's an

(44:38):
icon and he was a hero in our office. And
I was desperately disappointed in reading what he really did
in court and what a sleeves bag he really was.
He went after Barbara Hammer and Ton on a personal
level that was despicable, and he spent an inordinate amount
of time, a despicable amount of time smacking her around

(44:59):
with the love letters to Donna, going after her on
a personal level. Dude, you don't need to do it.
You know, it's enough that she'd secured a false alibi,
she admitted to the guy that she was there at
the scene of the crime. You don't need to disparage
her this way. Because he knew the Moreys of the
fifties were such that being in a gay relationship was
not something that people today would go whatever, you know,

(45:22):
but not back then. That then it was known to
be a horrible thing. You couldn't be gay, you weren't
allowed to be gay, and that, and then you were
a person of such ill repute and moral disrepute that
you couldn't you we're capable of anything. And he used
that endlessly although he had there was really no need.
And it was an ugly, ugly scene, but Barbara stood

(45:43):
toe to toe with him. She would knock back down
at one point, you know, he said, and then you
you deliberately lied. You deliberately did this. You you secured
that alibi from him, and you you told him that
you were You concocted this entirely fabricated but very elaborate
ruse about where you were with him, didn't you? And

(46:04):
then she said, you know, I was desperate. Can you
imagine being desperate? Have you ever been there? I don't
think you have, but you if you had been in
my shoes, you might have been. I mean, women didn't
stand up like that back then, I got to say.
And although I was I admired it, I don't know
that the women back then necessarily did.

Speaker 1 (46:24):
What was the makeup of the jury male to female?

Speaker 2 (46:26):
I think it was like seven to five for men.
And then, of course Jamiller leave the enclosing argument made
sure to nullify any impact Barbara's beauty might have. He
called her out. He spoke directly to the men on
the jury. Why do you think she took the witness stand.
She only did it so she could turn your heads,
so she could seduce you and tempt you. And that's

(46:49):
the only reason she was up there. Oh, really, you
don't think that the fact that she got caught with
a false alibi had something to do with it that
she had to explain? Really, that wasn't it. It was
horrible And yeah, but his remonstration to the men on
the jury that not to be tempted by this villainous
seductress really did find purchase with the men on the jury,

(47:09):
And one of them came out later, one of the
male jurors, and said, Yeah, I didn't buy her act
at all. I wasn't going to get pulled into that story.

Speaker 1 (47:18):
It worked, did Barbara's I don't know if she just
had one attorney or multiple. Were they public defenders? Were
they high profile who took this case?

Speaker 2 (47:26):
So back then there was no public defender. And so
what would happen is if someone was charged with a
very serious crime and couldn't afford a lawyer, the court
would require a private attorney to take the case pro bono,
that is, for no money, for free. Now that's one
thing if you have a case that pleads guilty right away,
or it takes three days or four days to go

(47:47):
to trial, but a case like this that took months
to prepare and then you know, be in trial, your
practice goes completely down the drain. I don't know how.
Jack Hardy, Jack Cardy was her lawyer, and he had
a younger man Wolf as his assistant. But Jack Hardy
was the mainstay. He was the one, and he a

(48:07):
very talented lawyer. He did an amazing job, he really,
he just he pulled out all the stops. He spared
no effort. He was very impressive. But he did it
totally for free. That was the system back then, not anymore,
of course, but it hamstrung him in many ways. Here's one,
because he got no money that many he couldn't afford
to hire an investigator. That meant that when he needed

(48:30):
to find witnesses, he needed to get the prosecution to
do him a favor send their cop out to help
to find a witness for him, because although the marshals
would serve subpoenas for the defense, and they were fine,
but they didn't have time to go chasing down every
defense witness. You know, they were limited in their amount
of time. Now, the minute the undercover cop testified on

(48:52):
the witness stand, he revealed the existence of Donna Prowe.
Donna Prowe was a go between that got Barbara to
go along with this scheme, false alibi. She would be
a key witness. She would be someone who could help
prove to the jury that Barbara got pressured inordinately to
go along with this whole plan, that it wasn't her idea,
that it was Donna's idea. Donna acting for the police,

(49:14):
that looks a lot different than if it's just Barbara's idea,
and she agrees to go along with it happily. And
that was the impression they got because there was no Donna.
So the defense the minute they heard Sirianni mentioned her name,
jumped up and said, where's Donna Prow. We got to
find Donna Prow. They went to the Marshall's office. The
Marshall tried to serve her with the information they had,

(49:36):
couldn't find her. The defense went to the prosecution. Jack
Hardy said, help me find her, Please help me. I
can't find her. Well, you should send the Marshal out.
I did. The Marshall can't find her. Look, they returned
the subpoena and said, we can't find her. Help me.
We can't help you. It's not our job, it's your problem. Well,
as it turned out, the prosecution buried her. The prosecution

(49:57):
knew exactly where she was, They helped her move, they
helped her leave the state, They knew exactly when she
was and where she was at all times, and deliberately
lied to the defense.

Speaker 1 (50:07):
I mean, isn't this must have just blown you away.
I'm sure you knew the history you know of criminal
justice system in LA, but I'm sure you've never dug
this deeply into something. And I know you already talked
about being disillusioned by this hero. So you must have
really been, I don't know, just stunned by how much
things had changed, even between fifty three and ninety five

(50:30):
when you were trying the Simpson case.

Speaker 2 (50:32):
I was disgusted. I was infuriated. I was you know,
I don't even have all the adjectives. There were times
reading the transcripts that I had to stand up and
walk away, take deep breaths, get a grip. It's like,
how could you do this? How dare you do this?
This is injustice in some of its most profound ways,

(50:53):
because one thing that a prosecutor can do that is
the one of the worst things they could do. A
very bad thing would be some morning perjury. But right
up there is hiding the evidence, hiding key witnesses. It's unthinkable,
and that he would do such a thing willingly, knowingly,
and the records I uncovered showed absolutely they did. It
was just unconscionable.

Speaker 1 (51:15):
How is that prevented? Now? How do you know as
a prosecutor that the defense isn't you know, is holding
anything back during discovery or vice versa.

Speaker 2 (51:24):
The defense is holding something back. I mean, you know,
in my day, when I think the earlier days as
a prosecutor, they were allowed to They didn't have to
give us any discovery at all, so we would find
out who the defense witnesses were when they walked into court.
And it's hard to get prepared for cross examination when
that's all you've got is someone's sitting on the witness
stand and giving their story for the first time. Nowadays

(51:46):
it's they try to balance it more and the defense
has the duty to produce the discovery on witnesses they
do intend to call and largely you know, I didn't
have any concern about that until the Cimizen case, when
they were hiding basic everything than that was the joke,
not such your joke of the trial when Karl Douglas

(52:06):
would have to fall on his sword repeatedly because the
defense kept sandbagging us and hiding things until they showed
up in court, it was that was crazy. But that's
not nearly as bad as a prosecutor hiding the ball.
That is the worst, because it's the it's the state's
duty to do it right. There are two different roles
in our system of justice. The defendant had the defense

(52:28):
attorney only owes a duty of fealty to his client.
That's it. He has to represent the client, who the
best of his ability, do the best job he possibly can.
But a prosecutor owes the state the duty of seeking justice,
the duty of making sure that there's a fair trial,
that due process is observed, and that a defendant is
fairly convicted of what he did, not what you dream

(52:50):
he might have done, what you can actually prove of,
what the evidence justifies as proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
And you don't hide evidency, you don't hide witnesses, you
don't coach witnesses. You're not allowed to do any of
that stuff. As a prosecutor, you owe a higher duty.
It's a different position than a defense attorney. And to
see a prosecutor who abandon every principle and those principles

(53:12):
who are in play even in Levy's time, is a
horrifying thing. I mean, you see, it's really it's a
dagger in the heart of democracy to undermine the system
of justice in this way, because that completely hobbles the
search for the truth.

Speaker 1 (53:26):
Let's wrap up what happens with Barbara, which boy, I
was optimistic for a long time, and then we get
to the jury. How long are they out and what
ends up happening here?

Speaker 2 (53:35):
I mean, the jury was hardly out very long at all.
They sequestered the jury, they went out for a day
and a night. I think that's basically it. The only
issue that they hung up on. They found them, like,
they all guilty relatively quickly, but they had to also
decide the issue of penalty at the same time. They
had to decide whether or not they were put to death. Now,

(53:56):
they had a system back then that was really not good,
and they do it anymore, thank goodness. But they did
not have to actually affirmatively vote for death to put
a defendant to death. All they had to do was
simply not vote for leniency. So if they didn't vote
affirmatively for leniency, that meant the death penalty, which is horrible.

(54:16):
If you're going to have a jury take the responsibility
of imposing the ultimate penalty, the very least you can
do is make it an affirmative act that they have
to put their stamp on this and say, yes, yes, affirmatively,
we want to put this person to death. But they didn't,
and ultimately they simply voted to not exercise leniencity all

(54:37):
three of them were put to death. Barbara was on
death row for a period of two years and then executed,
so they moved very quickly.

Speaker 1 (54:44):
Back then were there no appeals.

Speaker 2 (54:46):
There were repeated appeals, and she had a lawyer for
her appellate process who was indefatigable. This guy filed motions
and habeas, petitions, every appeal you could think of, to
every court he could find. And then another attorney stepped in,
William Strong. Very smart. He stepped in, and I thought,
this is a real appellate attorney because he nailed the issues.

(55:07):
He was a little ahead of his time, but he
was right on the money. He filed the petitions for
curgerary with the United States Supreme Court and tagged the
issues that would ultimately prove to be among the most
compelling and would change the law ultimately with regard to
Messiah versus the United States, where you know you're not

(55:28):
they could They couldn't put Sirianni in the cell with
her once she had a lawyer appointed, was indicted, that
kind of thing. He raised all of those issues back
then that did become the law ultimately, and Justice I
think it was Justice Douglas who actually voted to grant
the stay of execution for a period of time because

(55:48):
he wanted to hear the case in the United States
Supreme Court. But the other justices didn't agree and it
went back down. And then ultimately all of the appeals,
and they were considerable number were denied.

Speaker 1 (56:00):
Personally, where did Barbara end up with her mother, her
loser husband, Tommy, her other kids? Was she able to
say goodbye to all of these people or did she
want to say goodbye to her mother?

Speaker 2 (56:13):
Her mother? No, I mean her mother actually threw a
monkey wrench into every effort, every effort she ever made
to try and go legit. At one point she tried
to re establish contact with her other two children. Her
mother made it a point to contact the women who
were taking care of her children and say, don't let her,
don't let her get near those children. She's a terrible mother.

(56:34):
And then Barbara was crushed by that. You know, she
made a few efforts to go legit and straighten her
life out, and her mother was there to make sure
that never happened. So, no, there was no contact with
the mother, rightfully, so, I think. As for Tommy, Tommy
stayed with her final husband, Hank's mother, and did visit
with her as much as possible while she was incarcerated.

(56:58):
She did not at the very end to get to
to be with Tommy, but I have been in touch
with him online since then. He got a chance to
read the book and learn a little bit more about
his mother. She really loved him, and at least I
could give him that assurance.

Speaker 1 (57:11):
Ultimately, there are so many levels to this story where
you learn all about the law and what would happen
in the fifties through now, and misogyny and fem fatale
crap that I hate, and you know all of this,
But what is for you the big takeaway is it misogyny,
sexism in the criminal justice system. Why do people now

(57:32):
read your book and say, Wow, this feels recent or
this feels so far beyond what I could ever imagine
it would have been.

Speaker 2 (57:39):
Like the issues of the way in which justice can
be subverted, that's evergreen. It may have been more extreme
and more obvious in Barbera's case, although not necessarily, but
a prosecutor can always skew the service of justice by
simply not observing their duties as they should, and it

(58:00):
occasionally it does happen. For example, there was a case
about fifteen years ago, ten years ago, not so long ago,
Nora Jackson was being tried for the murder of her mother.
Was a heinous murder like fifty stab wounds, found dead
in her bedroom, Nora was arrested for it. I'm still
not convinced she did it at all. I think it
was a very weak case, and the prosecution failed to

(58:22):
turn over exculpatory testimony that impeached the statement of a
key witness for the prosecution, and then the prosecutor, in
the course of closing argument, violated one of the most
well recognized rules in prosecutions, which is, you are not
allowed to comment on a defendant's invocation of a Fifth
Amendment right. You cannot comment on a defendant's right to

(58:44):
remain silent, and you cannot tell the jury exhort the
jury to infer from that consciousness of guilt. Back in
Leedy's time, he did it all the time because that
was allowed in California, even though it had been outlawed
in the federal courts for many years. It was called
the comment rule. You were allowed to do it. And
then not long after Barbara's execution came Griffin versus California,

(59:07):
that outlawed in this state too, and I think it's
not allowed in any state in the Union now. But
the prosecutor, nonetheless, although for decades it had been the
rule that you can't comment, turned to Nora in the
course of closing argument and said, why won't you tell
us where you were? Nora? Why won't you tell us?
Knowing that she had invoked her right to remain silent.
Case got reversed, So it's not like back then. But

(59:29):
you know, do prosecutors step over the line? Yes? Does
it happen frequently? No? I do not think so. I
think most of the time, and I mean by that
an overwhelming majority of the time, the prosecutors do the
right thing. But when they don't, we have to be
there to make sure that it stopped and redressed.

Speaker 1 (59:48):
Do you find writing this kind of book as satisfying
as writing fiction or trying cases? Where does it fall
within you know, your skill set, your favorite things to do.

Speaker 2 (59:59):
I think I have to admit to being a true
crime junkie. I think right here, true confession. I never
thought of myself like that. But yeah, I think about
all the things I like to do, and it all
comes back. I am so consistent. Oscar Wilde would say
I'm boring his help, but I think I like them all.
It's like choosing your favorite child, you know. I like

(01:00:22):
them all for different reasons. They all come down to though,
solving the mystery of the human condition. You know, why
do people do what they do? What provokes someone to
do the ultimate act, to commit murder? And what do
we find acceptable in that regard? Sometimes we do and
we should and sometimes we don't and we shouldn't. But
there are all these shades of gray that I find fascinating.

(01:00:44):
In every case, there's something to think about, whether it's
a true crime situation or inventing a situation that poses
these very same questions.

Speaker 1 (01:01:03):
If you love historical true crime stories, check out the
audio versions of my books The Ghost Club, All That
Is Wicked, and American Sherlock, and Don't Forget. There are
twelve seasons of my historical true crime podcast, Tenfold More
Wicked right here in this podcast feed, scroll back and
give them a listen if you haven't already. This has
been an exactly right production. Our senior producer is Alexis

(01:01:26):
a Morosi. Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain. This episode
was mixed by John Bradley. Curtis Heath is our composer,
artwork by Nick Toga. Executive produced by Georgia Hardstark, Karen
Kilgarriff and Danielle Kramer follow Wicked Words on Instagram at
tenfold More Wicked, and on Facebook at Wicked Words Pod.