by Jean Stein
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CAROLE WELLS DOHENY: My father-in-law, Larry Doheny, was in the house when it happened. He was only like ten or eleven. It was about nine thirty, so he and Dickie Dell, the two eldest, were still up. I think they’d heard the yelling, so they were up there on the landing, just listening, wanting to know what was going on. They were there before the gun went off. It’s fascinating: the family didn’t call the police for three hours. They never told the truth about it, that’s the amazing thing.
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GAYLE CHELGREN: Ned and his father were in on the Teapot Dome scandal, and I read somewhere that my uncle was going to testify against Ned. My mother never told me this, because it hurt her to talk about it—she never talked about any of it—but there were some crooked dealings, and my uncle would have been involved since he was Ned’s secretary. And I think he was going to testify against Ned.
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RICHARD RAYNER: The Dohenys were trying to persuade Plunkett to rest in a mental hospital. The night that it happened, there was a sequence of altercations among him and Ned and Lucy Doheny about whether he should go. He didn’t want to. He left Greystone and then turned back up again around nine o’clock at night. The shootings happened and the next thing the doctor was called. The shootings happened about ten o’clock, but it was way after midnight before the cops got there.
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JOHN CREEL: Since Hugh had been the bagman on Ned’s trip to Washington and would have known all about Teapot Dome, the Dohenys wanted him to go into an asylum so he wouldn’t have to testify in the trial. He said no way. If he went in, who knew if he would ever come out? That’s why he was very upset and why he went to meet with the Dohenys that night.
What is never talked about is the fact that Ned lived in a different section of Greystone. The family didn’t want his children to see him when he was incapacitated. That’s why he lived in a separate part of the mansion, something borne out by the fact that he was not discovered in the family room or in the master bedroom with his wife. He lived in a virtually separate apartment in the mansion.
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RICHARD RAYNER: In his pictures Plunkett doesn’t look like the smartest guy in the world. I’m sure that he wished to do as right by Ned as he possibly could, but that nonetheless he felt he was being pushed to do something that he didn’t want to do. He was afraid that he’d be locked away forever. In Chandler novels, people are always being hidden away in cure homes or locked away by evil doctors in loony bins—in fact, held prisoner by some rich family. It was a way of shuttling off someone, of dealing with inconvenience and messiness. Plunkett clearly resented being used that way.
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JOHN CREEL: The Dohenys were belligerent about everything, spreading stories about what happened. My stepfather was really upset because he knew what they were saying was a lie, especially that his brother Hugh was crazy. The purpose was to keep him from testifying. And they spread the lie that Hugh killed Ned. From the very beginning my family never believed that Hugh killed Ned and committed suicide, and they were very, very upset about that. The whole issue of Hugh not being mentally stable was strictly manufactured so that he wouldn’t have to testify.
The other thing that would really upset my stepfather was the story that Ned and Hugh were lovers. He said that was totally unfair, although of course he would say that; Hugh was his brother. But he said there was no way, that Hugh was not like that. It was simply Hugh’s job to take care of Ned, because no one in the family could deal with him.
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PATRICK “NED” DOHENY: One of the things that I really regret is that there wasn’t more of an attempt made to bring Ned to life for us, including by my father, who was four or five when my grandfather died. And my grandmother never spoke of my grandfather, absolutely not. She was pretty strong willed and did not take kindly to questions about him because of the tragedy surrounding the situation. Apparently Ned had a great sense of humor and was a lot of fun, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there weren’t some issues with depression. I have a strong sense that there was loneliness there. With his dad away all the time, and his mom dying like that, I would think there would be some unfinished business. I’d love to know more about who these people were. It’s a huge piece to be missing. Huge.
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RICHARD RAYNER: Leslie White was a young investigator for the L.A. district attorney’s office and one of the first detectives to arrive on the scene the night of the killings. He believed Doheny shot Plunkett. When you see the remarkable crime scene picture that White took and his assessment of it—the way the powder burns appear on the respective head wounds of the two guys—you see why. Raymond Chandler, who had worked in the oil business and was fascinated by Doheny, obviously thought the same as White did, because of the way Chandler incorporates the Doheny-Plunkett story in The High Window. He not only borrows a passage from Leslie White’s book, Me, Detective, that describes going to Greystone, but at one point Chandler has Marlowe describe the killings and then say, “You read it in the papers…but it wasn’t so. What’s more you knew it wasn’t so and the D.A. knew it wasn’t so and the D.A.’s investigators were pulled off the case within a matter of hours.” The story of a cover-up was clearly bubbling around in the air, and people knew that whatever happened that night, they hadn’t been given the straight scoop. At one time I had a fantasy that I’d find the piece of paper that finally solved it. But when I started looking into the Doheny story, there was just nothing; it was all destroyed.
White later became a writer and in the 1930s was more successful than Chandler. He had more vivid street experience than Chandler, and he felt that he could write the inside story of the city’s shame, of the corruption of L.A. Me, Detective has nothing of the emotional depth or descriptive resonance that you get with Chandler—who may have met White and certainly knew his book—but it’s still kind of a great book.
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ANSON LISK: Ned committed suicide. We lived close to the Dohenys, and the night that it all happened I recall the phone ringing at two o’clock in the morning and the uproar after that. My father helped Lucy straighten everything out. He went over and kind of managed the whole affair forward, kept it as quiet as possible. He did everything he could to help. He was friendly with the police in Beverly Hills, so he called them, and he steered Lucy through everything. But I think Ned shot his male secretary and shot himself. I think he was having an affair with his secretary and something happened.
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RICHARD RAYNER: It is intriguing to look at the newspapers from those few days, when the story explodes so quickly and then is over in a flash. They just bring the shutters down, and all reporting stops. Doheny has clearly called in every favor in town that he can, getting on the phone with L.A. Times publisher Harry Chandler, saying, “Okay, after the funerals, that’s it, no more.” It happens very, very quickly. The shootings were on Saturday night, Ned’s funeral was on Tuesday, and Hugh’s the day after. And that’s it. It’s almost instantaneous. The Plunketts were nobodies, and you get the sense that the parents were bewildered by what happened. They had no wherewithal and were just crushed by the remorselessness of this power and control, the lineaments of which were visible then.
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JOHN CREEL: They never truly allowed an investigation, so we’ll never know the true story. Everyone was afraid of the Dohenys, so the things published weren’t true. The Dohenys were just so powerful. After two days, the district attorney, Buron Fitts, refused to get into the case or investigate further, even though he came into office saying he was going to clean up corruption. My stepfather often went into the police station to try and get information, and he also called on Leslie White but was told that White wasn’t allowed to talk about the case while still part of the district attorney’s office. My stepfather knew, though, that White was going to write a book and that one of the stories in it would be about the murder. And when you read White’s book, there’s absolutely no question that Ned Doheny shot my step
father’s brother, Hugh Plunkett. For example, the fact that Hugh had a cigarette in his hand proves that he couldn’t have been violent in that moment. He might have been arguing with Ned about going into a sanatorium, but if a smoking cigarette is still in your hand, you’re not doing anything violent.
That’s why my stepfather was so adamant about finding Leslie White’s book. When it was published, he tried to buy it, but he was told there were no copies available. Everywhere he went, people told him the same story. He said that the Dohenys bought up all of the books. He’d been looking for it for years, and finally I found a copy for him in the Los Angeles Library. The library never occurred to him. He probably thought that the Dohenys were so powerful they could even keep it out of the library.
The Dohenys owed back pay to Hugh, and my stepfather was the one who tried to see about some form of settlement, but the family didn’t get anything. So he had to leave USC and find work for the family to survive, and the only job he could find during the Depression was moving stone in a quarry for twenty-five cents a week.
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GAYLE CHELGREN: My family was not wealthy at all, and the Dohenys were of course very, very wealthy. I don’t think they threatened my family, since they saw that my family wasn’t gonna put up any battle. My mother always said, “Let’s put it away. It’s been done, so let’s forget it.” That’s how she handled it. But my uncle Robert fought that; I think he got the maddest about it. If he were here now, he would be patting me on the back, saying, “Good, let’s not let this die.” But the Dohenys came right away and purchased the cemetery plots for my mother’s whole family at Forest Lawn. My grandmother is there, as is Hugh, who is buried not far from Ned Doheny. The rest of the family didn’t want anything to do with it, because the Dohenys had given them the plots. My grandfather is not buried there.
My grandfather, a house painter, was a stern, tall man. I never had a lot of fun with him, but once in a while he’d crack a smile. He was very quiet about Hugh’s death. Those were tough times for him. I imagine they were all so angry that they just held it in and didn’t want to talk about it anymore. Eventually my grandfather had a stroke. He lived at our house for maybe a couple of weeks, and then he died. It was kind of quick for him.
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JOHN CREEL: The Dohenys were very religious, and from what I understand they were very upset that Ned didn’t receive a Catholic burial. I think the family must have disclosed the truth to the priest, and the priest made that decision. They couldn’t lie to a priest. The fact that Ned wasn’t buried with the family in the Doheny location at Calvary Cemetery indicates to me that he committed suicide. It also indicates that people knew this and that there was collusion to keep the truth from the public.
My stepfather really didn’t want to talk about it too much, because it was a hurtful part of his life. He never brought it up, although he would talk about it if I asked a question. But he would get very melancholy, and you didn’t want him in a melancholy mood. It was really traumatic for him whenever he thought about it, so he just didn’t think about it very much. He would go and visit Hugh’s grave at Forest Lawn once in a while, but always alone. My mother didn’t even go with him.
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RICHARD RAYNER: In October 1929, eight months after Ned and Hugh’s deaths, Albert Fall was convicted of receiving a bribe from Doheny, so the next year Doheny went on trial for giving the bribe that Fall had been convicted of receiving. As the trial went on, there were teams of lawyers, with Frank Hogan at the top of the pyramid of attorneys, trying to get Doheny off the hook. At one point they were all working out of Chester Place and the bowling alley there, which they dubbed “Hogan’s Alley.”
Hogan was extraordinary. The L.A. Examiner said that he was like Houdini in the courtroom, using any trick or sleight of hand to get his client off the hook. He had a wildly dramatic, compelling flair, and in this trial, he pulled an extraordinary stunt: he sat in the witness chair himself as questions asked of Ned Doheny in the earlier trial were read to him and to which he read Ned’s responses, as if he were Ned. He was channeling the tragically dead son of the accused. Poor Ned ends up being used by his father even after he’s dead. He was probably more use to his father dead than alive at that moment. It was extremely cynical, awful. Yet it works. The trial concluded on a very cold day in Washington, and incredibly Doheny was acquitted. He was found innocent of giving the very bribe that Fall had been convicted of accepting, a Lewis Carroll legal moment. Doheny gave Hogan a million dollars as a bonus and threw in a Rolls-Royce for good measure, prompting Hogan to say, “The ideal client is a rich man when he is scared.” A great line. But Doheny was kind of gone already, a broken man. He died not long after.
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TOPSY DOHENY: Pa D. had a stroke. I don’t know the year that it happened, but when Tim’s father was killed it just knocked the stuffing out of him. That was virtually the end of his life, the poor man, his only child killed. It was a terrible tragedy.
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ANN SMITH BLACK: We’d go to Chester Place for Easter, where they had eggs hidden all over, and we’d have a wonderful Easter egg hunt. Pa D. had had several strokes, and he was sitting drooling in his wheelchair. We were all supposed to kiss him, but everybody tried to escape as fast as they could.
His funeral was very Catholic, and it went on forever. Afterward, Ma D. always had two or three priests who stayed with her at the house, which was a great comfort to her. There was one particular priest that was kind of her confessor, and he was nice.
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TOPSY DOHENY: Ma D. was a convert, and those are always the most rabid people of all. When her husband died, she was left in charge, and I’m sure she was lonely and sad. And already a lot of people from the church were coming around and influencing her. I think around that time they made her a papal countess, and eventually, the church got her entire collection of rare books. She had visions of her memory lasting forever, but they auctioned everything off.
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PATRICK “NED” DOHENY: She was such a devout Catholic. They were both pillars of generosity to the church, but don’t get me started. That’s a rant I will keep to myself. But if she hadn’t given all that dough to the Catholic Church? She gave a staggering amount of money, to the point of where it’s like, “Oh my god.” And the day of Pa D.’s funeral, she burned all his papers. Those weren’t hers either. She later said, “I really felt bad about that afterward,” as if she had nothing to do with any of it. Not only did you not make any of the money you gave away, but you didn’t have anything to do with any of the letters or anything else. You just step in, someone who was not part of the process in any way, shape, or form, and direct everything in whatever manner you think right? What the hell is that? She was pompous and self-important. She thought that she was protecting his memory, but she was a foolish woman.
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RICHARD RAYNER: The Doheny family is still present in L.A. What’s haunting is that in order to secure his power and position, Doheny ended up sacrificing his own family. It’s tragic, and he was obviously destroyed by it. It’s an original-sin sort of story. His legacy is forgotten and flawed yet emblematic in its own secret way. Few now remember who Doheny was, yet the name is still significant and present—the Doheny Memorial Library at USC, designed by Wallace Neff, the Doheny Eye Institute, Doheny Drive, Doheny State Beach. And then there is the grand Greystone mansion, which fell into disrepair before being bought and restored by the City of Beverly Hills. It’s open to the public now and an amateur theater group even stages murder mystery tours there. Enter Greystone!
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LARRY NIVEN: One of my cousins was on a tour at Greystone, and he heard the guide announce that all of the Dohenys were now dead. He set the man straight. I imagine he was polite if supercilious. After that, the tour guides invited the Doheny clan for a special tour of their own, and I went. My grandmother put in some really outré baroque chimneys, although I don’t remember them from my childhood. And the bowling al
ley’s real; I used it as a child. There was an Olympic-sized swimming pool, always cold, because it was surrounded by trees. Even in the summer it was too bloody cold, but you swam anyway. There was a tall diving board and even a tower with a diving board on that. Now it is a swimming pool only a foot deep. In order to avoid lawsuits, they poured a lot of concrete in there when the city took ownership.
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GAYLE CHELGREN: I went to a wedding shower at Greystone once. I wanted to go inside and steal something from the bathroom, but I didn’t. I was kind of overwhelmed with the whole thing. We were out in the garden, mostly; it was a huge, lovely place. I know they have tours, and some of my friends have gone through it. But I have never had an interest to do so. And you know what? The old family is all gone, and these are the young people that had nothing to do with it. They believe what they want to believe. Still, I resent the Doheny family tremendously, and I wasn’t even born when all of this happened.
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RICHARD RAYNER: Raymond Chandler famously said that “the law is where you buy it and what you pay for it.” He completely saw the way that power works in Los Angeles, which along with corruption became his broadest subject. And he kept going back to the Doheny story. It’s glanced at in different ways throughout his work, and it lingered with him as a paradigm for what he saw as the rotten heart of paradise.
II
THE WARNERS