Quote:
Originally Posted by ethereal_reality
Murder Suspect Lloyd Smith, Held In Slaying Of Harriet Walke, Los Angeles [1935]
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Thanks
Ethereal for the fascinating post but my brain hurts now trying to figure what the heck happened. Writers in the 1930s used words and phrases that are obsolete and no longer in use.
What was the motive and what happened to radio announcer Lloyd Smith? The whole sorry scene gets creepier with each newspaper story.
Yes, this tale needs a lot of further detail.
From 2009:
More details
HOLLYWOOD, Oct. 14, 1935—(UP)—Police detectives searched through beer parlors and school houses of North Hollywood tonight, hunting for a "laughing murderer" whose sharp falsetto, accompanying the ping of a .22 caliber high-power bullet, was the only tangible clue in the weird killing of pretty Harriet Walke, 29-year-old actress and beauty contest winner, on Lankershim Boulevard last night at 9:00 p.m.
Two 13-year-old girls, only witnesses to the shooting, were unable to tell police whether the killer was a woman, a hysterical man or a boy.
Mrs. Walke was shot in the hip by someone in a brown coupe, as she stood by a roadside in North Hollywood last night, with two bottles of beer under her arm. The bullet severed an artery, and she bled to death on the way to a hospital.
The two tiny witnesses, Jean Clark and Ruth Clinesmith, saw the car whisk up to the curb, heard the sharp crack of a gun and heard someone in the car break into shrill laughter as the car roared out on the highway again. An instant later they saw the woman slump into the gutter. Mrs. May Moon, the first person to reach her, said Mrs. Walke’s last words were, “I don’t know who did it.”
Lloyd Smith, radio announcer and companion of the actress, told police he and Mrs. Walke, estranged wife of Norman Walke, veteran cowboy actor, had visited Smith's estranged wife earlier in the day. (She and Walke had been estranged for four years.)
They talked over "in a friendly way" the possibility of Smith and Mrs. Walke marrying as soon as both received final decrees of divorce.
Mrs. Walke and Smith returned to their apartment at the Elmo Hotel later in the evening, and she went to the market to buy beer. At the time of the shooting, Smith said he was purchasing groceries.
Mr. Walke reportedly was at Big Bear Lake, about 100 miles from Los Angeles, on location with a film company.
Police questioned habitues of a North Hollywood beer parlor, which Mrs. Walke frequented while Smith was away for several weeks on construction work at the Colorado River aqueduct.
They said they were working on a theory "a jealous woman" may have shot the actress. Belief that schoolboys attempting a youthful holdup might be responsible for the shooting sent detectives scurrying among schoolchildren in an effort to run down leads.
Mrs. Walke was taken to the Van Nuys Receiving Hospital, where she was pronounced dead. The only wound was a small bullet wound to the left hip.
HOLLYWOOD, Oct. 15.—(UP)—A woman eye-witness, who saw a man step out from the shadows of a hedge at the minute Mrs. Harriet Walke, 29, film studio "stand-in" for actress Marian Nixon, was shot to death, sent police on a new search today. The witness was Mrs. Thomas Bryant, whose story, brought out for the first time, puzzled authorities more than ever in their investigation of the North Hollywood slaying.
THEORY DOUBTED
Mrs. Bryant's story led police to doubt their first theory that Mrs. Walker was shot from an automobile, which sped away while a shout of laughter rang out.
Startled al hearing a woman's scream, Mrs. Bryant looked from her front window, she said, and saw Mrs. Walke run past.
"I saw a shadowy figure of a man step from behind the hedge on the corner, I heard two shots, and then the woman fell," she related, "The shadowy figure ducked, into the hedge and disappeared.
"An instant later, a small car came down the street, swung over to where the woman was lying, paused for a second or so, and drove on.
"It looked as though the occupants of the car had started to help the woman, and then had become frightened and left."
STORIES CONFLICT
Her story that the automobile did not reach the scene until after the shooting conflicted with that of Ruth Clinesmith, 14, and Jean Clark, 13, schoolgirls. Police planned to re-question the girls today. The girls saw Mrs. Walke in a large market, and she left shortly after they did.
Running down the mystery car angle, police learned names of the roadster's original owner and the man to whom he sold it, and planned to question them also.
Police were divided between two theories—that Mrs. Walke was marked by a "revenge" murderer, who pumped a bullet at her from the passing auto, or that she was shot by a nervous bandit who stepped out from behind the hedge. A .22 calibre bullet struck the woman's hip, severing an artery, and she bled to death.
Walke lived at the Elmo Hotel in North Hollywood.