Overell's
I caught the blackjack right behind my ear. A black pool opened up at my feet. I dived in. It had no bottom.
Raymond Chandler, Farewell, My Lovely
Overell family monument Forest Lawn, Glendale
image from findagrave
Walter and Beulah J. Overell lived in a spacious, well-known manse in Flintridge with their daughter Beulah Louise, the sole heir to their part of the Overell furniture fortune. Beulah Louise had a boyfriend, George 'Bud' Gollum late of the U.S. Navy and, by the parents lights, a poor match for their headstrong but woefully naive seventeen year old daughter. A mid-March trip to the family yacht, the 47 foot Mary E., anchored in Newport harbor was planned. Perhaps to dissuade the young couple from their planned wedding or perhaps to simply become better acquainted with the boy.
BudBeulah
Beulah gazes at Bud in an apparently happy moment.
http://www.pasadenaweekly.com/cms/st...e_affair/8353/
On March the 14th, Bud and Beulah drove to Chatsworth and purchased more than a hundred sticks of dynamite. Bud signed the reciept with an alias. On the evening of the 15th, now aboard the Mary E. in Newport, Mr. Overell suggested the 'kids' go down to a local burger joint and bring a midnight snack back to the boat. The Burger joint was next to a bowling alley and that is why, Beulah Louise would later testify, they didn't hear the explosion. Back on the dock, presumably still holding a bag of burgers and fries, Bud and Beulah watched as the Harbor Patrol and other boaters tried to pull her parents from the burning wreckage. The Mary E. sank in 18 feet of water. There were no survivors. They would be charged with murder.
Beulah Overell is introduced to the business end of the Speed-Graphic
May 28, 1947: Newspaper photographers grab photos of Bud Gollum and Miss Overell during morning recess of their murder trial in Santa Ana. Photo published in the May 29, 1947 LA Times.
Remains of a time bomb were found by investigators of the yacht explosion.
One imagines the guy smoking the pipe while handling dynamite was known on the force as a competent guy who laughed in the face of danger. photo by L.A.Times
Cameras (and reporters) ordered out of courtroom in Overell-Gollum trial
Aug. 12, 1947: Attorneys during the Overell trial battled over admissibility of Overall-Gollum correspondence in court, but reporters and photographers were barred at request of Otto Jacobs, Miss Overell's lawyer. Police officer explains the court order in Courthouse corridor. Beulah Overell and her boyfriend George "Bud" Gollum were accused of killing Overell's parents. Photo appeared in the Aug 13, 1947, Los Angeles Times
The trial dragged on through the summer with much damning evidence of a time bomb and a hoped for secondary explosion, mysterious clocklike parts and more dynamite in the trunk of Bud Gollum's car. A series of graphic, lurid love letters exchanged from their jail cells found their way into the press and when the closing arguments had ended and the trial was turned over to the jury, no one could say for sure how it would turn out. But after two days of deliberation, they were found 'not guilty', the verdict raising cheers in the coutroom and on the crowded sidewalk outside.
Walter and Beulah J.'s final rest
Walter and Beulah J. find peace at last in a bucolic corner of Glendale, California. photo from findagrave
In the end, the kids didn't get married. Asked after the trial if they would go forward with their wedding plans, Beulah answered with a terse, 'No!' Bud drifted off, stole a car and did time on a Georgia work farm, then faded from sight. Beulah went to UCLA and perhaps ironically married a Los Angeles police officer, Robert Cannon. But the marriage only lasted two years. After the divorce, she began to drift too, finally settling in Las Vegas and marrying a bartender, Joe Kooyman. She battled alcoholism until finally, her bruised nude body was found in bed with two empty vodka bottles and a loaded rifle. She was 36. Bud Gollum died in February 2009 in Wasilla, Alaska. He was 83.