by Steve Hodel
The Boomhower-Spangler
Kidnap-Murders
Mimi Boomhower (August 18, 1949)
THE STORY OF MIMI BOOMHOWER'S disappearance broke on August 24, 1949, in the morning editions of the Los Angeles papers. The Bel Air socialite and "prominent heiress" had apparently vanished from her mansion six days earlier. Mimi, referred to by her friends as "the Merry Widow" because of her fondness for "going out on the town" and partying at various Hollywood nightclubs, had lived alone since the death of her husband in 1943. LAPD police detectives, who responded to the Boomhower home in Bel Air, discovered that all the house lights had been left on, her car was in the garage, the refrigerator was filled with fresh food and produce, and items recently ordered by her from stores had been delivered the day after her disappearance. Deputy Chief of Detectives Thad Brown issued a statement to the press in which he said, "We simply do not know what happened to her."
An unidentified witness found Boomhower's white purse in a telephone booth at a supermarket located at 9331 Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills, with a note written directly onto the purse in large handprinted letters that read:
POLICE DEPT. —
WE FOUND THIS AT BEACH THURSDAY NIGHT
In retracing her movements, the police learned that the last known person to have seen her was her business manager, Carl Manaugh, who had spoken with her at his Hollywood office on Thursday afternoon, August 18. Manaugh told the police that Mrs. Boomhower had informed him "she was meeting a gentleman at 7:00 p.m. at her home," whom he believed may have been a prospective buyer for the mansion. An article in the Mirror revealed, "The police were discounting rumors that a scar faced gambler was angry at Mrs. Boomhower for not selling him the place for a gambling palace."
A possible suspect, identified by the newspaper as "Tom E. Evans, ex-host on Tony Cornero's gambling ship and former dope peddler, is to be questioned in West Los Angeles today." An ex ex-LAPD officer phoned in a tip that several days before her disappearance he saw Evans with the victim having drinks at the bar at the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood.
Tom Evans was a gambler, with a criminal record in Los Angeles dating back to the early 1920s. He had prior local arrests for bootlegging and robbery and had convictions for "opium running." As the former associate and employee of Los Angeles vice czar and gambling ship owner Tony Cornero, Evans was well-known to LAPD, who ran him out of town after the shooting and wounding of Cornero in Hollywood in 1948. Cornero's assailant was never identified or arrested.
Evans told reporters who questioned him after he was identified in the paper, "Sure I was in the bar at the hotel last week — I'm there every day." He was taken to West Los Angeles Division police station and questioned by detectives, but denied knowing the victim. Detectives told the press they believed that Evans was "in the clear, and that someone probably just had a grudge against him," adding that they had been receiving numerous phone calls and tips and had eighty names of possible suspects. In the course of my investigation, I learned that Tom Evans was not only Tony Cornero's bodyguard, but also an acquaintance and associate of my father, dating back to 1925.
After interviewing Mrs. Boomhower's friends and business associates, police learned that only days before her disappearance she had inadvertendy acknowledged to her furrier William Marco that she "had been secretly married." She said she couldn't give Marco an order for a fur she was contemplating buying, because "I'll have to talk it over with my present husband." Then Marco said that the victim "checked herself" and said, "I'll talk it over with my family and come back."
The only public clue of substance was the victim's purse, which the police laboratory determined contained no particles of sand that could have substantiated its having been found at the beach. The police believed that the purse had been left at the phone booth by the suspect himself, because the phone booth was only a few miles from her home and the purse appeared only a few hours after her kidnapping. A citizen who anonymously turned in evidence to police would more likely attach a note to it.
On September 30, 1949, the court declared that Boomhower was dead, but to this day her body has never been recovered and the case remains in LAPD files as another unsolved homicide.
The Physical Evidence
As indicated, it is highly unusual that a witness would write a note directly on the victim's purse. People who make such finds usually attach a note to the evidence. Los Angeles's three largest newspapers — the Times, the Herald Express, and the Examiner — all simply reported the text of the message on the purse. Only the Los Angeles Mirror ran a photograph of the purse itself, in order to display the handwritten message as it physically appeared.
August 25, 1949
Earlier, I had sent Hannah McFarland the known and questioned documents relating to the Black Dahlia and Jeanne French cases. At this point in my investigation, in September 2000, I sent her a copy of that photograph, informing her only that the questioned-document sample was written in the year 1949 and that the purse was believed to be made of leather. Below is the photograph as it originally appeared, modified by the arrowed markings that were made by McFarland as part of her analysis.
Exhibit 59
Boomhower purse — questioned document 10 (Q10)
Here is her report:
September 28, 2000
RE: Analysis of Q10 — Printing on Purse
Dear Mr. Hodel:
I am informed that Q10 was printed on a leather purse. This sample, from 1949, has three individual characteristics that are also present in the Known and Questioned printing samples:
1) The O in
police
and
found
on Q10 is slanted to the left. This O is also found in Kl, K5, Q2, Q8, and Q9.
2) Q10 has letters with horizontal strokes that start far to the left of the body of the letter. This is seen in the letters D and P in
dept,
and the letter B in
beach.
This formation is also found in Kl, K2, Q7, and Q8.
3) The letter S in
Thursday
on Q10, has a straight stroke in the middle of the letter that forms an angle on each end. This S is also seen in Kl, K5, K6, Q2, Q7, and Q9.
Due to the three individual characteristics that are common between Q10 and the Known and Questioned printing samples, I concluded it was highly probable that Q10 was printed by the same person who printed the Known and Questioned samples.
The differences between the printing on Q10 and the Known printing samples can be explained by the disguised appearance (irregularity) on Q10.
The unusual printing conditions presented by printing on a leather purse may also play a role in some of the differences between Q10 and the Known samples.
Hannah McFarland's forensic analysis of the handwriting on Boomhower's purse irrefutably connects George Hodel to the kidnap and murder of Mimi Boomhower, one more victim in the skein of lone women murders that took place in the late 1940s.
One month after Mimi Boomhower disappeared, I believe the Dahlia Avenger struck again.
The Jean Spangler Kidnap-Murder
On Tuesday morning, October 11, 1949, the Los Angeles Daily News headline read:
FEAR NEW DAHLIA DEATH
200 IN ACTRESS HUNT
The victim, a prominent actress, had been kidnapped off the streets of Hollywood, and evidence found in Fern Dell Park sent two hundred LAPD officers on a search for her body.
Jean Elizabeth Spangler was a twenty-seven-year-old actress on her way to becoming a star. She was beautiful, intelligent, filled with vitality and promise, and well liked in the film industry and the brand-new television business, where she had just started working.
After the first headline story in the Daily News, early in the week, the other local newspapers picked up the scent. The grisly headlines quickly proliferated: "Spangler Mystery Deepens," "Cryptic Note Clue to Missing Actress Mystery," "Probe Dancer's Secret Date with Death," "Glamour Girl B
ody Hunted; Parallel to 'Dahlia' Case Seen," "TV Actress Feared Sex Murder Victim."
Under pressure from the growing unrest in the district attorney's office at the unacceptable performance of his detectives, Deputy Chief Thad Brown held a meeting with officers in the Homicide Division, and then told the press, "Death by violence is indicated in her disappearance." He'd sent up the red homicide flag.
Spangler presented an intriguing challenge to detectives, because, as a background check of the victim's activities in the years preceding her disappearance revealed, there were a number of times her path had crossed Elizabeth Short's. In fact, Spangler had once worked as a dancer at Mark Hansen's Florentine Gardens.
Spangler had married Dexter Benner in June 1941, six months before the start of World War II. The couple had one daughter, Christine, born on April 22, 1944. Shortly after her birth, Benner was inducted into the service and sent to the South Pacific.
Other court documents showed that Jean had asked her husband to initiate formal divorce proceedings in 1943, prior to her pregnancy and the birth of Christine. At that time, Spangler told her attorney she "did not want to appear in court," and revealed her infidelities with a "handsome Air Force first lieutenant," whom she "intended to marry." Jean freely admitted that she'd become involved in an "affair with this pilot," and they "had been living together off-and-on, in a Sunset Boulevard motel." In 1943, a few months after making these revelations, Jean became pregnant, reconciled with her husband, Dexter, and Christine was born the following April. Court papers revealed that after Dexter's assignment overseas, Jean again began seeing "Lt. Scott," and, on her husband's return, informed him of the resumed affair, which caused them to immediately separate and divorce. After their separation, the two became embroiled in a bitter child custody dispute that ended with the court awarding full custody of their daughter Christine to Jean.
Albert Pearlson, Spangler's divorce attorney, told police (after her 1949 kidnapping and disappearance) that "Scott had, during the time of their relationship, beaten her up, blackened her eye, and threatened to kill her if she ever left him." In the same court documents, the Army Air Force lieutenant was described as being "tall, about 5-11, slender build, clean-cut and handsome." Jean Spangler refused to identify and provide the true name of her lover to the court. After her disappearance, her attorney indicated that he "could not recall the officer's name" and that "everyone just called him 'Scottie.'"
Sensing another Dahlia-type murder story in the making, newspapers quickly sent reporters out to pursue their own investigations. Here is my reconstructed timeline of what they reported:
Wednesday, October 5, 1949
Spangler, while working on a movie set at Columbia Pictures studios with actor Robert Cummings, told Cummings that she "had a happy new romance" and was having the time of her life. She did not tell Cummings her new boyfriend's name.
Thursday, October 6, 1949
LAPD detective W. E. Brennan, in charge of the investigation, told the press that "Miss Spangler had a date with a man the night before her disappearance." Reporters also learned that a married couple, friends of the victim, had spoken with her briefly in front of the Hollywood Ranch Market. Spangler had been seen sitting with a "clean cut man in his thirties" in a black sedan parked in the Ranch Market parking lot. A short time later, witnesses saw Spangler and her companion standing at a nearby hot dog stand, which was located directly across the street from the studio apartment where Man Ray and his wife, Juliet, were living, approximately one mile from the Franklin House.
Friday, October 7, 1949; 5:30-7:30 p.m.
Jean Spangler left her apartment at 6216 Colgate Avenue in Hollywood at 5:30 p.m. after telling her sister-in-law Sophie Spangler, who was babysitting Christine, that she would be home that night but expected to be late. Jean called the apartment two hours later at 7:30 p.m. to check on her daughter, spoke briefly with her sister-in-law, and again confirmed she would be home that night.
Saturday, October 8, 1949; 1:30 a.m.
Witness Terry Taylor, the proprietor of the Cheese Box Restaurant at 8033 Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, who also knew the victim personally, recalled seeing her seated at a front table with a man he described as, "male, 30-35, brown hair, clean cut, tallish with a medium build." His information was confirmed by a second witness, Joseph Epstein, who sold papers in front of the restaurant, who also identified Spangler as being there at about 2:00 a.m. on Saturday morning.
2:00 a.m.
Witness A1 "the Sheik" Lazaar, a radio personality who broadcast his show live from the Cheese Box, said he saw Spangler sitting at the restaurant with two men he didn't know. When he approached the threesome at their table to do a radio interview, he saw that Miss Spangler "appeared to be arguing with the two men." When one of the men saw him walk up to the table, he abruptly signaled to him that they did not want to talk to him, and "the Sheik," in his own words, "veered away and did not attempt to conduct the interview."
9:00 A.M.
When Jean Spangler failed to return home, her sister-in-law, fearing foul play, contacted LAPD and filed a missing persons report. Dexter Benner picked up his daughter at his ex-wife's apartment and took her home to his place, intending to bring her back the following day.
Sunday, October 9, 1949
On Sunday morning, October 9, Jean Spangler's purse was found lying ten feet off the roadway at the entrance to Fern Dell Park, the exact location where Father would drop me and my brothers off to play during the summer months of 1949 when he went to his downtown office or made house calls. The park is exactly six-tenths of a mile from the Franklin House. A park employee, Hugh Anger, found the purse and called the police.
The handle on Spangler's purse was torn loose and the purse itself had been ripped, which indicated a struggle. A handwritten note, written in pencil by the victim, was found in the purse:
Kirk,
Can't wait any longer. Going to see Dr. Scott.
Will work best this way while Mother is away.
Daily News headlines on October 11, 1949, read, "Fear New Dahlia Death," and speculated that the Spangler disappearance could be connected to other murders.
. . . some of the officers working the case inclined to the belief that she may be the 10th victim of a series of unsolved female mutilation murders. The maniacal slaughter of women began with the famed Black Dahlia case in 1947, when the tortured and gruesomely carved body of black-haired Elizabeth Short was found naked in a weed-grown lot.
As in the Spangler disappearance, also in the Black Dahlia case a purse was featured when some unknown person mailed it to police during the investigation of her baffling fate.
And more recently a purse containing a note was found in the unsolved mystery of the disappearance of Mimi Boomhower, wealthy and flirtatious Bel Air widow.
Jean's mother, Mrs. Florence Spangler, was out of town visiting relatives in Kentucky when she heard of her daughter's disappearance. She immediately returned home and, according to the papers, provided detectives with the name of a man whom she thought was responsible. The Daily News headline for the October 12, 1949, story read, "Mother Sure Film Player Murdered," and went on to say:
The mother of film actress Jean Spangler, who mysteriously disappeared five days ago, said today she is convinced her daughter has been murdered, and gave police the name of the man she thought responsible for the girl's death. "I am sure this man hired somebody to do away with my daughter," said Mrs. Florence Spangler, who arrived here today from a vacation in Kentucky.
Police refused to reveal the name of the man named by Mrs. Spangler but said they had already questioned him at some length.
The intensive two-hundred-man search by LAPD officers of Fern Dell Park, on horseback and on foot, revealed nothing new. The victim's body was never found, and the police never released the name of the man provided by Florence Spangler, whom they had questioned regarding the victim's disappearance. Although no progress was made in the case, Deputy Chief Thad Brown, in
what appeared to be more of a public relations move than part of the actual investigation, interviewed actor Kirk Douglas to ascertain whether he might be the "Kirk" mentioned in her note. Douglas indicated he did not personally know the victim and could provide police with no information related to her disappearance.
On October 13, 1949, some six days into the Spangler murder investigation, LAPD homicide detectives again arrested Tom Evans. Evans was booked on a technical charge of robbery after detectives found him in possession of a large amount of cash, with, according to the charges, "no visible means of support."
The newspapers indicated that Evans was being held for suspicion of robbery and would be questioned the following day by Captain Jack Donahoe himself, now head of Robbery Division, in connection with both the Spangler and Boomhower investigations. Captain Donahoe told the papers, "We have no evidence linking him to either case, but he is known to play women to get money." Evans's photograph was prominently displayed in three local newspapers; yet, once again, he denied any involvement in either crime. "I didn't know either one of the women," he said to newspaper reporters. "Next they will be trying to pin Cock Robin on me. I'm presently involved in promoting a deal in the Philippines involving sugar and hemp. Now I suppose this current publicity will ruin my Manila deal." Evans told reporters that a similar roust by LAPD a month earlier on the Mimi Boomhower investigation had "ruined a Las Vegas deal" he was about to close. Evans blamed his troubles on a "retired LAPD detective, now working as a private investigator."
As Evans had predicted, no charges were filed against him in connection with the Spangler case, and, even though the press applied relentless pressure on the LAPD to come up with some resolution, the hunt for the perpetrator of the Spangler kidnapping, like that for the killer in the Dahlia and Lipstick homicides, came up empty.
There were, however, reports in the papers that a real struggle was taking place inside the LAPD over the handling of the Spangler case, notably in the search for the person named Scott to whom Spangler had referred in her note. A Los Angeles Times article of October 12, 1949 stated: