Van didn’t bother to tell Judy that he had lived a block away on Jones Street with his last wife. He simply led his lover through the foyer and up the steps to their new home.
They spent the next month pretending they were married and hoping Verda would not find them. In July, Judy became ill, too. Worried that she had contracted hepatitis from him, Van brought her to San Francisco General Hospital on July 30.
Judy was diagnosed with hepatitis, but the physician also informed the fourteen-year-old that she was pregnant.
When she was released from the hospital, she nervously called Verda.
“Mother, I have to tell you something,” she said.
“What now?” Verda snapped, irate that Judy had not contacted her since she had run away. “Where have you been? I’ve been worried sick.”
“We went to Mexico, but there was an earthquake and we had to come back,” Judy said nervously. “And I’m pregnant. Three months. Mother, I’m scared.”
Verda’s tone became reassuring, persuasive, as she asked Judy to come home so they could talk about it. “Bring some things for an overnight stay. We have to figure out what to do.”
“Okay,” Judy said. “I’ll have Van drive me.”
When Judy and Van pulled up to the house at 1245 Seventh Avenue, Verda was waiting. Although Van had scanned the area, he had not seen the police cars hidden around the corner from the house. The officers waited until Van got out of the car before they confronted him.
“Earl Van Best, you are under arrest for child stealing,” one officer said, grabbing Van and pulling his arms behind his back. Judy struggled with the officer as he clamped the handcuffs tightly around my father’s wrists.
Crying, she watched the police take him away.
“How could you do this?” she screamed at her mother as Verda herded her into the house.
“How could you?” Verda answered.
My mother was sent back to the Youth Guidance Center.
My father was placed in a cell on the sixth floor of the Hall of Justice. He was sitting on his bunk, contemplating his next move, when a handsome young man walked up.
“Mr. Best, might I have a word with you?”
Van looked at him questioningly, wondering if he was a lawyer. “I’m Paul Avery, with the San Francisco Chronicle,” the man said. “Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?”
Van shook his head.
Avery pulled out his notebook. “Where did you meet Judy?” he asked.
“At Herbert’s Sherbet Shoppe. She was there . . . beautiful and sweet,” Avery would later quote Van as saying.
“But she was only fourteen,” Avery said.
“That didn’t matter.”
Over the next half hour, Van told Avery the whole story.
“He Found Love in Ice Cream Parlor,” read the headline of the San Francisco Chronicle on August 1, 1962. Pictures of Van and Judy were splashed across the page, accompanied by an article depicting their romance. “At the moment, several sets of steel bars and more than a mile in distance separate Van and his one-time wife, Judy Chandler,” Avery wrote before describing how the now twenty-eight-year-old man had fallen in love with a teenager.
When Van saw the article, he was furious. He didn’t like the way Avery had portrayed him as if he were some old, balding child molester. Avery would later dub their love affair “The Ice Cream Romance.” Van would never forgive him for mocking his love for Judy.
Other newspapers followed suit.
The San Francisco Examiner reported that “the mild-mannered, bespectacled son of a Midwest minister sat in his cell at city prison yesterday and wept for his bride—blonde, 14, and pregnant.”
On August 7, 1962, Van was indicted for child stealing, rape, and contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
Verda testified before the grand jury first, indignantly telling jury members how Van had taken her daughter to Reno and married her. She stated that she’d had the marriage annulled, but then Van had kidnapped Judy from the Youth Guidance Center.
William Lohmus was called to testify about how he had driven Van and Judy to the airport when they had first eloped.
Judy was also forced to testify, but when she came out of the jury room, she had a big smile on her face.
Those who saw her wondered why.
The whole country would soon know why.
Sitting in the lobby of the courthouse, my grandfather, who had flown to San Francisco as soon as he received Gertrude’s call, bowed his head and prayed for his son when he heard the news that Van had been indicted.
Van had already been released on bail and was unconcerned.
The next day, Judy escaped from the Youth Guidance Center again.
Van was waiting.
On August 9, San Francisco police officers caught up with them, and Judy was sent to the maximum security ward at the Youth Guidance Center. Van was taken in handcuffs to the sixth floor of the Hall of Justice for the third time. This time the charges were more severe: criminal conspiracy, enticing a minor from home, and rape of a female less than eighteen years old.
Two days later, Earl posted his son’s bail.
By August 24 Judy was sick again, the hepatitis she had caught from Van causing her to be hospitalized. She was placed in an isolation ward at San Francisco General Hospital.
On August 31, Van was back in a San Francisco courtroom for a hearing on his case. As would later be revealed in a video of the proceedings, Van, dressed in a white shirt with sleeves rolled up to just below the elbow, a beige sweater-vest, and pressed tan pants, confidently walked up to the podium, his face showing no expression as the judge set his trial date.
He left the courthouse and went to Crocker Bank to withdraw all of his money and close his account. Then he paid William an unexpected visit.
“What are you going to do?” William asked. He didn’t like the determined look on Van’s face.
“I can’t tell you,” Van replied, handing William five hundred dollars. “Hold this for me in case I ever come back or if I ever need some money in a hurry.”
“Van, you’ve got to stop this,” William begged. “She’s not worth it.”
“Yes, she is,” Van said. “Please don’t tell anyone I was here. I don’t want you involved.”
That same night, around midnight, my father, disguised as a doctor, walked into San Francisco General Hospital looking for my mother. He was not going to let anyone keep her from him. A few minutes later, doctor and patient walked nonchalantly out of the hospital, without attracting attention. Once outside, Judy and Van ran to the rental car he had waiting.
At 3:40 a.m., the floor nurse noticed Judy’s empty bed and sounded the alarm, notifying Dr. L. N. Swanson of the escape. The doctor telephoned the police, who immediately put out an all-points bulletin for the couple.
“Sundae Bride Hunted,” the headline in the San Francisco News–Call Bulletin read the next morning. “Guards on the Mexican border have been alerted to watch for San Francisco’s 14-year-old ice cream bride and interrupt—if possible—her third elopement.”
“The girl vanished early Friday from San Francisco General Hospital, and less than 12 hours later, a blood-stained auto was found abandoned near King City,” reported the Examiner.
Newspapers across the country picked up the story, jumping on the illicit romance of it all. A nationwide manhunt ensued, but Judy and Van were long gone.
When they left the hospital, they had driven south on Highway 101, heading for Mexico, but Van had fallen asleep at the wheel and careened off the road.
Judy screamed as the car crashed into a ditch.
Van, jarred awake, jumped out of the car. “Let’s go!” he yelled, ignoring Judy’s concern about the blood covering the spot where his head had hit the steering wheel. “We’ve got to get out of here before the cops come.”
Judy followed him onto the road. “What are we going to do?”
Van stuck out his thumb as a car approached.
&nb
sp; It took them only two hitched rides to reach Sacramento. By that evening they were sharing a chocolate milk shake at a root beer stand in Williams, north of Sacramento. They spent the night in a roadside hotel, making plans. Van knew the police would suspect they were going to Mexico, so he decided to head for Canada instead.
The next day, another article appeared in the Examiner: “Judy Chandler, the missing 15-year-old ex-bride, was seen sharing a chocolate milkshake with her former husband Friday night in the Sacramento Valley town of Williams.” The newspaper got it wrong—Judy was still fourteen.
The article went on: “When the owner of a root beer stand on Highway 99 and his two employees saw a picture of the missing couple on the front page of The Examiner yesterday, they called the newspaper. Police questioned the three last night and said they had positively identified the couple.”
On Sunday morning, my fugitive parents stopped at a diner for breakfast. Van noticed his picture staring back at him from a newsstand and hustled Judy out of there fast. He realized they would not make it to the border without being recognized.
“I’m hungry. Why can’t we eat?” Judy asked him.
Van did not answer as he steered them toward a Longs drugstore behind the diner. He told her to wait outside.
Van headed for the cosmetics aisle, studied the products for a moment, and then slipped a box of women’s hair dye under his sweater. He walked up to the counter and bought a pack of Lucky Strikes. Judy nervously waited outside.
When they got back to the motel, Van insisted that she dye her hair.
“I don’t want to, Van,” Judy cried.
“Our pictures are everywhere. You have to do this,” he insisted. “Do you want to go to jail? Someone will recognize you.”
Tearfully, Judy watched in the mirror as her beautiful blond hair turned black. The person looking back at her was a stranger—a pregnant, black-haired stranger. She noticed Van’s crooked smile of approval through her tears. For the first time, she realized they were in big trouble. She swallowed back a lump of fear in her throat.
Van decided to double back, confident that no one would recognize Judy now. He worried about his own appearance but thought that his glasses would suffice as a disguise. Most of the newspaper photos had been taken when he was not wearing them. He was right: no one recognized them as they hitchhiked to Los Angeles, where he hoped they could go unnoticed in the big city.
Van soon rented an apartment in an industrialized area near Torrance and insisted that Judy get a job, because he couldn’t risk being recognized. Covering up the bulge in her belly as best she could, she got a job at a nice restaurant on the north side of Los Angeles near Hollywood. When the manager realized she could not even mix a Bloody Mary, she was fired within a week.
In late September, Van and Judy headed south to San Diego. There was no hiding Judy’s growing belly now, and her chances of getting a job were becoming slimmer. The money Van had brought was running out, but he convinced a gullible woman to cash a bad check for three hundred dollars. He knew they had to get out of California. At a bar, he persuaded a drunken patron to give them a ride to Tucson, Arizona. He still held on to the thought that if they could get to Mexico they would be safe. He had crossed the border many times—at Tijuana, Tecate, Mexicali, and El Paso. He thought El Paso would be the safest route. They could travel to Ciudad Juárez and be home free.
Sympathetic drinking buddies provided transportation along the way. The Rescue Mission of El Paso provided lodging.
Judy was miserable. Each morning, in order to be able to eat breakfast for free, she and Van were required to attend church service and prayer sessions. Their daily breakfast, consisting of eggs with blood visible in the yolks, made the already nauseated girl sicker. After forcing herself to eat one morning, Judy experienced pains in her back and began having trouble urinating. When she doubled over on the floor, Van called for an ambulance.
Judy was diagnosed with a kidney infection, and Van, with no way to pay her hospital bill, befriended a woman named Belle and asked her to cash a check for one hundred dollars. Belle gave him her money, and he gave her a worthless check, signed by one of his growing list of aliases, John Register. Before Judy could be discharged, Van whisked her away from the hospital without paying the bill.
Worried about his love, Van spent the evening cooking a meal that Judy would always remember: ground beef with a baked potato. It wasn’t that the meal was that special; it was the sweet way he’d tried to take care of her, the fact that he had cooked for her. Since their escape, Van had not been as nice as he’d been in the days they’d spent walking home from the sherbet shop or playing tourist in Mexico City. He had become short-tempered. Snappish.
Mean.
That night restored her faith in the man who had swept her off her feet.
In her befuddled state, and experiencing pain from the infection, it was only later that Judy realized what Van had already known.
The date was October 8, her fifteenth birthday.
14
My father’s plan to cross the border near El Paso was nixed when someone at the hospital put the pieces together after the couple left without paying, and identified them as the Ice Cream Bride and her fugitive husband. Evening news reports announced that the runaway couple were planning to cross the border at El Paso. Troops at the border were ramped up as U.S. Border Patrol and local law enforcement agencies vied to catch the runaway couple.
Van’s father was determined not to let that happen. He had been in San Francisco when Van took off with Judy again, and he had returned home to Indiana with a heavy heart.
When two gentlemen in suits showed up at his home and produced their badges, he wasn’t surprised.
“We’d like to monitor your telephone,” one of the men informed Earl, who had no choice but to agree.
The minister listened politely while they explained how the bug worked. When they were finally gone, Van’s father, tears rolling down his face, got into his car and drove to his pastor’s home. Suddenly, the minister needed some ministering of his own.
After his confession, the pastor allowed Earl to use his phone. Earl called his family in South Carolina. He informed them that Van was in a lot of trouble and on the run. “Spread the word,” he said. “If Van and the girl show up, I will pay for any help they are given.”
Out of options in Texas, my father offered to write a check to anyone who would give him and his pregnant wife (as he called her) a ride to Mississippi. It wasn’t difficult. Judy’s condition elicited sympathy.
Earl’s brother Rufus, having gotten the message, was not surprised when Van and Judy showed up at his door in Meridian, Mississippi, hungry and disheveled. He agreed to help the couple on a temporary basis.
Rufus’s dilapidated farmhouse was located on a few acres in the woods outside of town. In mid-November, the temperatures were dipping into the mid-forties, but there was no central heat in the house, only a cast-iron wood-burning stove and a few space heaters scattered about. An outhouse served as the bathroom, and Judy, who was six months pregnant, had to make the trek to the smelly, rickety old building often.
“I want to go home,” Judy told Van on the first night of their stay, trying to get comfortable on the lumpy sofa bed Rufus had folded out for them.
“Stop whining and be still,” Van said. “We’re lucky to be here. At least we’re safe.”
Judy didn’t see it that way.
Although Rufus allowed them to hide out there, he was not comfortable with the idea. He worried that others would find out that he was harboring fugitives and constantly made the couple aware of the trouble he was courting on their behalf. He had promised Earl he would take care of them. He had not promised to make their stay a pleasant one.
“If you want to eat, you hunt your food,” he told Van. “I can’t be feeding the whole damn family.”
“You can come with me,” Van told Judy. “I’ll teach you how to hunt.”
“No,” Judy crie
d. “I don’t want you to kill anything.”
“You want to eat? Let’s go.” Van grabbed a rifle from beside the door, checked to make sure it was loaded, and headed out the door with Judy in tow.
“Just aim and shoot,” he said, positioning the rifle along her shoulder.
“I don’t want to,” Judy begged, tears glistening in her eyes.
“Shoot the damn thing. Just aim and pull the trigger,” Van said.
She got off one shot and handed him the gun, trying to hide her trembling hands by rubbing her shoulder where the gun had kicked.
She watched in horror as a squirrel appeared from the brush and Van took aim and fired.
“Look,” he said, holding the bloody rodent triumphantly for Judy to see. “One shot. And he was running.”
Judy didn’t want to look, but Van held the squirrel close to her face and then laughed when she retched.
At dinner, Judy begged him not to make her eat it, but Van insisted, the tone in his voice inviting no argument. Judy put the meat into her mouth and tried not to vomit.
Every day, her body burdened with the weight of her child, Judy hesitantly followed Van into the woods, praying he wouldn’t shoot another animal. Van’s bullet always met its mark.
Three weeks later, Van decided it was time to move on. Judy couldn’t have been happier. The Van she saw in the woods was not the charming man she knew. She didn’t like this Van.
Rufus gave them some money and an old family footlocker in which to pack their things. Van recognized it from his childhood. “Where did you get that?” he asked.
“Your father gave it to me years ago,” Rufus told him.
Van opened it reverently, but the christening gowns and family documents it had once housed were gone. He inhaled its familiar cedar scent before filling it with the few items he and Judy had brought with them.
Rufus silently wished them good riddance as my parents headed off to Jackson, Mississippi, where Van rented a cheap room in a motel frequented by prostitutes. It was a far cry from the hotel in Acapulco, where the balcony overlooked the Pacific Ocean, and room service brought baskets of fresh fruit each day.
The Most Dangerous Animal of All Page 8