She was a fledgling writer and editor for the university’s yearbook, the 1926 Quad, as well as the Stanford Daily, a campus newspaper. As a graduate student she wrote lengthy and deeply researched features, including stories about the school’s hefty endowments and the publication of the university’s yearbook. Her writing was fluid and engaging—she clearly delighted in journalism.
“In a few short miles one passes from sea level to mountain top, each region abounding in the wild creatures and plants peculiar to it,” Allene wrote about Stanford’s role as a game refuge.
She was particularly enamored of the gorgeous Northern California countryside. She had moved from her native Missouri several years before, and her surroundings were often featured in her writing.
Inside the yearbook’s offices she met David Lamson, the charismatic editor in chief for a popular humor magazine, the Stanford Chaparral. They shared so many interests, both brainy students who were engaged in the Stanford community. By graduation Allene had been charmed by the handsome writer, and they were married just a few years later.
Her thirty-one-year-old husband of five years was slim and fit with dark brown eyes and a full head of thick, wavy dark brown hair just beginning to recede at the forehead. Much of the time David Lamson seemed pensive—curious women might have labeled him “intriguing.” The outer corners of his eyes drooped just a bit, but his young daughter almost always drew out a sly smile that turned big and bright. He was perpetually charming with friends, which made them a popular couple, much to Allene’s delight.
In 1933, David was the sales manager of the Stanford University Press, the school’s prestigious publishing house. He had spent a year teaching advertising at the university—a writer with ambition. Allene was an assistant executive secretary with the YWCA, which was more of a job than a calling. The position didn’t tap the skills she had earned from her two degrees. It stifled her, but unemployment wouldn’t do.
“She needed something to occupy her mind,” David explained to a friend. “She was not satisfied to be home.”
The Lamsons were a modish couple, both hailing from well-respected families. David was from Cupertino, California—his mother and two sisters lived nearby, one of whom was a well-known physician with her own medical practice. Their friends were some of the most moneyed figures in Palo Alto—there was a chemist with the National Research Council, a metallurgical engineer, a journalism professor, and an attorney. One of their closest confidants was socialite Louise Dunbar, President Hoover’s glamorous niece, who cavorted with the city’s bluebloods.
Allene gazed in the mirror as she examined the tiny lines on her face, as most women do. She was twenty-eight years old and the mother of a toddler, a little girl with black curly hair she named Allene Genevieve, whom she called Bebe. Allene smoothed her braids, coiled them, and fastened each to either side of her head neatly with hairpins, part of her morning routine. It had been such a taxing night, the last evening of a holiday weekend. She and David had zipped between social events for the last three of four evenings. There was a visit with the Ormsby family on Friday, several bridge games at the Swains’ home on Sunday, and dessert with their friends Dr. and Mrs. Ralph Wesley Wright the night before. The Lamsons enjoyed being hosted by friends, intellectuals who challenged their ideas and tickled them with quick wit.
“I would say they were quite happy,” remembered Dr. Wright.
But the couple’s enthusiastic socializing might have finally taken its toll. After chatting for several hours with the Wrights over dessert the night before, the Lamsons arrived home by eleven with Allene’s stomach in knots. Perhaps it was the lemon pie and orange juice that Mrs. Wright served, she wasn’t sure. David tried to be considerate; he insisted on lying down in their daughter’s nursery at the back of the house so he wouldn’t disturb her, which had been their routine for years when she needed rest. Luckily two-year-old Bebe was at a sleepover with David’s mother—a blessing, the families would later say.
David reminded Allene that he planned to do yard work the following day; he removed his work clothes, bathrobe, pajamas, and house shoes from the hall closet so he could slip out quietly in the morning. Allene snuggled under the sheets and closed her eyes, but not for very long.
The stomach pain had returned around three that morning when she called his name; there was no need to shout because their house was so tiny. David appeared at their bedroom door in his pajamas. He ran his hand gently across her back to comfort her and then suggested she have a bite to eat.
Soon Allene could hear him collecting things in the kitchen. He handed her a glass of lemon juice mixed with water; then he quickly left and returned with some warmed-up leftover tomato soup and a toasted cheese sandwich. Eating something hot usually lulled her back to sleep, but she had little appetite that night. She nibbled on the crust and took just a few sips of soup.
David returned to the nursery as Allene fell asleep again. The house was quiet now without Bebe; it was almost disconcerting. A silent home meant a respite from the incessant crying of a toddler who had suffered from horrible sinus infections all winter. It had been an exhausting few months for Allene—night after night of coaxing a sick child back to bed with the help of a nursemaid in the little girl’s room. David was the one to suggest that Bebe stay with his mother; he also told the nursemaid to take the holiday off so he and his wife could have some privacy. With Bebe sleeping at her mother-in-law’s, Allene was in a peaceful home, despite the indigestion.
By nine that morning, David appeared in the bedroom’s doorway once again. His shirt was off, his chest was sweaty, and his face was wet after hours of early-morning yard work near the bonfire.
Allene was still feeling poorly, but David had anticipated that. The water from the tub in the next room rumbled through the pipes—a hot bath was waiting for her. David had also prepared a breakfast tray in the kitchen with a bowl filled with Shredded Wheat cereal, a container of cream, and hot water for her morning cup of Postum, a popular coffee substitute made of whole grains and molasses for those who didn’t care for caffeine.
David guided Allene down the short hallway to the left of their bedroom. Much of the tiny bathroom was bright white, including the walls, the fixtures, and the tile around the tub. The room was far too cramped for two people, so David gently maneuvered her around the basin; she suffered from notoriously weak ankles.
Allene kicked off her sheep fleece–lined slippers, untied her nightgown, and hung it on the door nearby. David helped her step into the tub, which was now quickly filling with warm water. Weighing about 115 pounds, Allene was a delicate woman even at her healthiest, and her stomach was still bothering her that morning. She hoped that a long soak might move along her recovery—she didn’t intend to wash her hair, just relax. She didn’t even bother with a bar of soap.
Allene was steady as she lowered herself into the water, while David turned and left the door slightly ajar, stuck on a thick doormat. The tub was about halfway full when she turned the handle and slowly stood up—it was time to begin the day. The doorbell rang, but it might have gone unnoticed.
Suddenly the light that illuminated her bathroom vanished—deep blackness was everywhere. Perhaps she had closed her eyes, just for a bit, but the sensation was startling, as if she was blinded by thick ink. She was breathless, and now there was an aching at the back of her head, stretching from ear to ear. She collapsed.
The outside of the porcelain tub was cold as her body slumped over the side. Her torso dangled halfway out. Her arms hung down. Allene’s head tilted toward the tiles of the bathroom floor as one of her beautiful dark braids, which she had so gently fixed earlier, became unpinned and drooped along her left arm to the floor. The ends of her hair were frayed. One of her hands rested on a slipper, which had been lying on the tiles just outside the tub.
There was blood everywhere—even on the ceiling—but she didn’t notice. She was limp, dy
ing. Red liquid from the back of her head quickly spilled into the clear water in the bathtub as crimson tentacles reached away from her body. The water slowly turned pink. Dark red streaks slid along the side of the tub. Within minutes, the blood glistened in her hair, soaking the brown strands along with almost every surface of her bathroom.
Allene Lamson’s gruesome death would soon attract more attention than her quiet, ordinary life. Her friendships and her marriage would offer morbid fodder for a scandal-hungry press and a politically savvy prosecutor. Most of Allene’s friends didn’t realize that her gracious smile had hidden some troubling secrets, but soon everyone would know. She was married to a killer—even he had admitted it. And soon newspapers across America would accuse David Lamson of murdering Allene, too. But that narrative would unfurl later. For another few minutes Allene Thorpe Lamson would lie alone, dying in warm bathwater.
* * *
—
For the past three years David Lamson had been a reliably cordial neighbor. His scheduled weekend tasks in the small backyard were part sweat equity, part social hour. Friends peered over their fences and gossiped with one another about colleagues and classes as they trimmed their lush fruit trees—quince, apple, pear, loquat, and fig, among others.
“I hoed,” he remembered, “cleaned away the weeds by the blackberry vines, which I wanted to irrigate.”
That morning David’s task was to trim his artichoke plants in the back garden, not an unusual edict for many husbands who chose to use the holiday as a day to check off their chore lists. He strolled into the garden around seven after having a small breakfast with coffee. The Lamsons would soon be off to the mountains. They planned to spend the summer away from Palo Alto and would be renting out their bungalow for a few months. There was so much to do beforehand. Neighbors watched David navigate the piles of trimmings and weeds. Right before ten, he stopped for a chat with Helen Vincent about simonizing her car.
“I remarked that he was doing more than one thing at a time,” recalled Vincent, “getting a sunbath and doing his garden work.”
During their conversation a woman appeared in his garden, Julia Place, the Lamsons’ real estate agent. She explained that she had two clients with her from San Francisco who might want to rent the Lamsons’ home for the summer. David seemed a bit surprised, because they hadn’t arranged an appointment. Allene must not have heard the doorbell’s ring from the bathtub.
“He said it would be perfectly all right if I would go to the front,” said Place. “He would go through the back door and let me in with my clients.”
Place and Vincent watched David slip on his shirt and walk into his house through the back porch, while the agent and her clients returned to the front. Less than four minutes passed before an alarming sound came from inside—perhaps a scream.
“I really cannot describe it,” Place would later explain to police. “I would say it was hysteria.”
* * *
—
“My God, my wife has been murdered!” he cried as he flung open the door.
Julia Place and her clients, standing on his porch, stared at him. He was screaming, his shirt covered with pinkish-red blotches. His hands and face were dripping with water. Much of what happened next became a series of dim memories. He remembered carrying his nighttime clothes down the hall toward the bathroom.
“The first thing I saw was blood on the floor and the next thing was Allene lying over the tub,” David said, “her skull fractured.”
He cried out and cradled her, smearing blood across his shirt. She wasn’t responding to his voice. He laid her down again and dashed down the hallway, leaving his footprints in her blood along the way. Allene sank back into the tub and hung over the side.
“Of the rest of that morning I remember mercifully little,” David said. “It is as if the shutter of my mind opened now and again to photograph a scene, leaving a series of isolated impressions with blank gaps in between.”
He begged the real estate agent to come inside.
“Get the police to find the murderer!” David screamed.
He ran to the bathroom again, crying wildly and staring at his wife as he held her again. One neighbor said she could hear his screams from one hundred yards away.
“Some of the things I remember most vividly are matters of no possible importance,” David remembered. “A friend’s voice urging me to come away, to let my wife go from my arms.”
He would later learn that his neighbor Mrs. Brown found him kneeling by Allene’s body, crying. She led David toward the nursery before he fainted and collapsed. A horrible scene would later haunt him.
“The glimpse of a neighbor’s face, twisted with pity and horror, emerging distinct from the blur of faces that filled the house,” David said.
He ordered Mrs. Brown to call his sister the physician . . . and the police. It was 10:10 a.m. when Palo Alto’s chief of police and several officers rushed into the cottage. There were now more than a dozen people inside the tiny home. The chief spotted Mrs. Brown holding a bloody towel and scolded her for inadvertently ruining forensic evidence.
“She was down, cleaning up something off the floor,” said Chief Howard Zink. “I told her to stop wiping up the blood, that everything must be left as it was, for evidence.”
Eight officers had responded, and soon each was interrogating David. A photographer snapped pictures while Allene Lamson lay on display—her naked body was partially draped over the tub for almost two hours. Strangers stared and whispered. The coroner noted several lacerations and contusions to the back of her head. One investigator shoved his hand in the tub just inches from her body and declared that the water was still warm. The doctors tested for rigor mortis, the stiffening of the limbs and joints that happens about two hours after death. They could still rotate her head, and the autopsy later concluded that Allene had died about an hour earlier, sometime after she climbed into the tub.
“Who could have done it?” David cried. “No one had anything against her.”
The house was a nightmare for investigators. Allene’s blood had been transferred to almost every corner of her small home. The pathologist, the undertaker, officers, and countless neighbors had all shuffled through the scene, along with David Lamson and the real estate agent. There were large pools of blood in the bathroom, splashes in the hallway, red footprints leading to both bedrooms, sprays containing hundreds of droplets on each bathroom wall, and smears wiped on doorknobs. Reconstructing the scene would be arduous, even for more experienced detectives.
Officers peered down at the bathroom floor. It seemed improbable that a petite woman could be responsible for so much blood. Doctors guessed that about half of her blood had drained from her body, about two-thirds of a gallon. Some of it was diluted by water from the bath. Some of it was arterial—blood that had sprayed directly from the body and had not mixed with any other fluid.
After two hours Allene was hoisted onto a stretcher—she spilled more blood along the route to the front porch. Her neighbors were awestruck. It was a ghastly, abrupt ending for an accomplished woman who had commanded respect from the time she strolled onto Stanford’s campus. Allene’s death would soon become even more troubling, particularly for her husband. The police chief eyed David as he answered questions.
“Ten minutes after the deputies arrived they were accusing me of murdering my wife,” David said. “Two hours later I was in the jail in San Jose.”
* * *
—
Less than twelve hours after Allene’s death the press happily latched on to the story. Subscribers to the local newspaper, the Santa Cruz News, found a piece with the titillating (and long) headline “Prominent Young Palo Alto Woman Is Found Dead in Bath Tub with Gaping Hole in Back of Her Head.” Hundreds of newspapers across America had picked up the report by the end of the day.
“Sheriff William Emig expressed belief she had been
slain,” the copy read. “David Lamson . . . could offer no motive for his wife’s death.”
David seemed to agree with the sheriff that someone had broken into his cottage, perhaps a robber, and killed his wife while she bathed—there was no other explanation. The story was read by a remarkably large number of American readers who begged to be teased by the media. A year earlier, the famous aviator Charles Lindbergh’s twenty-month-old son was kidnapped for ransom from the family’s mansion in Hopewell, New Jersey. For two months federal agents led a massive manhunt for the baby before his body was found in the nearby woods.
Federal agents tracked thousands of leads in the Lindbergh mystery. Each new detail prompted a media frenzy and sold millions of newspapers, but by the spring of 1933, there were few updates, so readers were eager for another scandal. Now newspaper editors offered up the mystery of a prominent university academic turned wife killer as the next big headline. With each twist readers demanded more details, preferably lewd bits of gossip disguised as facts.
“Mystery Man Adds New Theory Puzzle,” declared a headline printed two days after Allene’s death. A university student had spotted a “shabbily dressed stranger loitering near the vine-covered campus cottage.” The witness said the man was lurking by the home early Tuesday morning when Allene died. Not credible, according to police, because David Lamson was the murderer. The couple’s friends weren’t convinced; the disquieting rumor snaking its way around the upscale neighborhoods on campus was that there was a killer stalking the upper-class houses along Stanford University’s Faculty Row.
* * *
—
“Guest.” That’s how Santa Clara County sheriff William Emig described David Lamson’s status in the jail in San Jose, California. He was not arrested or charged, but he was being held while investigators scrambled to sort through evidence. The police knew they were running out of time, because Lamson’s attorney was complaining loudly to the media about false arrest allegations.
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