Air Raid Covers Deadly Crime

In late February 1942, three months after Pearl Harbor, anti-aircraft fire lit up the sky over Los Angeles. Amid reports of Japanese warplanes, the city plunged into a panicked blackout. When the all-clear finally sounded, seven people were dead. Three had suffered heart attacks; three died in traffic accidents.

And one was murdered.

As the searchlights dimmed, Marie Griffin was found beaten to death in a rooming house on the edge of Skid Row. She was discovered naked in a room littered with empty bottles. The landlord reported she had shown up two days earlier with a companion who vanished during the chaos of the "air raid." He was never identified.

Detectives found Griffin’s identity in her purse: a divorce decree from her second husband, Frank Monroe, and a deed to a cemetery plot in Omaha, Nebraska. Her first husband had been Jimmy Griffin, a notorious Omaha gangster shot dead by police in 1925. She evidently came to L.A. to start over, only to be killed during a phantom war.

The "attack" was revealed to be a false alarm triggered by a stray weather balloon. It became known, derisively, as the "Battle of Los Angeles"—a night of military embarrassment that provided the perfect cover for a killer.

An L.A. Times photographer captured an image (above) of searchlights converging on an unidentified object as anti-aircraft shells explode around it. The photo kindles UFO theories to this day.

This Month in True Crime Infamy

In March 1944, while the world’s eyes were fixed on the shifting front lines of World War II, a different kind of darkness was unfolding across the American landscape. From the segregated mill towns of the deep South to the glittering, candlelit apartments of Manhattan, the gears of justice were turning—though often with devastatingly different results.

The Tragedy of Alcolu

On March 24, 1944, the bodies of 11-year-old Betty Binnicker and 8-year-old Mary Thames were discovered in a water-filled ditch in the segregated mill town of Alcolu, South Carolina. The girls had been beaten to death with a 15-inch railroad spike.

“Justice” was swift. Stinney was arrested, and a deputy sheriff said he confessed, though no written record of the statement ever existed. On April 24—exactly one month after the girls were found—Stinney was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death in a single day. Jurors deliberated just 10 minutes.

Stinney’s court-appointed attorney called no witnesses, performed no cross-examinations, and filed no appeal.

On June 16, 1944, the 95-pound boy entered the execution chamber at the state penitentiary in Columbia. He was so small that guards had to use a Bible as a booster seat so his head would reach the electrodes of the electric chair. When the first jolt of electricity hit, the oversized mask slipped from his face, revealing tears to the witnesses.

Seventy years later, a South Carolina judge vacated the conviction, ruling that Stinney’s right to a fair trial had been violated. History now remembers him as the youngest person executed in the United States in the 20th century.

Tulsa Svengali Unmasked in Hypnotic Slave Scandal

A bizarre tale of "hypnotic slavery" began unravelling on March 28, 1944, when Willetta Horner, 30, fled a Tulsa home she shared with 51-year-old Carolann Smith. Horner filed a harrowing suit claiming Smith had used "mesmerism" and physical abuse to hold her and 31-year-old Virginia Evans in squalid servitude for years. Smith allegedly coerced the women into surrendering their paychecks under the guise of "purifying their souls," while Smith herself lived in luxury.

Police investigators Alice Whitney and Buela Johnson eventually pried a confession from Smith. While the "mother to the girls" claimed she was merely a guardian, police discovered a hidden hoard in the house: 18 pairs of gloves and 45 pairs of unworn shoes. Even more audacious was Smith’s war-time graft; she had fraudulently collected eight ration books, including one issued to her pet dog.

Despite the federal gravity of mail fraud and ration-book schemes, Smith faced only a minor state charge for forcing the women to give false testimony. For years of psychological torment and theft, she served a mere six months in McAlester state prison. She reportedly never repaid a cent of the thousands she stole.

Phone Call Trips Up "Roaming Romeo"

The FBI finally caught up with Roger Gardner, the nation’s most-wanted fugitive, on March 28, 1944, thanks to a classic "wrong number" moment. A master of deception, Gardner drifted across the United States using a carousel of aliases—including Grant Terry and Richard Tardiff—to marry nine women and defraud dozens more. He was posing as a dapper federal lawyer named "Donald Douglas" when his house of cards finally collapsed.

The end began when Bernita Arnold called "Douglas" at his New York hotel, only to have another fiancée answer the phone. After a brief, chilly exchange ("Well, really... so am I"), the two women met to compare stories. Realizing the scale of the scam, Arnold headed straight to the FBI — borrowing $5 from Gardner for taxi fare.

The investigation revealed a much darker side to the charming "Romeo." Gardner was the prime suspect in the "Gardenia Murder" of Ora Murray, whose body was found on a Los Angeles golf course, stripped and posed over a single gardenia corsage. Despite the gruesome evidence, Gardner’s luck held: a California jury deadlocked on the murder charge. He was ultimately sent to San Quentin for one to 10 years on a secondary fraud charge, while the murder of Ora Murray remained officially unpunished.

The Case of the "Civilly Dead" Heir

Patricia and Wayne Lonergan

On March 31, 1944, a New York jury convicted Wayne Lonergan of the murder of his 22-year-old heiress wife, Patricia. The trial, which became a tabloid fixture, ended with a sentence of 35 years to life—sparing Lonergan the electric chair, but effectively erasing his legal existence.

Patricia had been strangled and beaten with two heavy candlesticks in her Manhattan apartment. Lonergan, a Canadian who had met Patricia through her father, brewery owner William Burton, initially denied the crime. He told police he had spent the night with a soldier he had met earlier that evening, though he eventually confessed. While he later argued self-defense at trial, the jury didn't buy it.

While Lonergan sat in Sing Sing, a court battle erupted over Patricia’s $7 million estate. Lonergan attempted to claim the fortune, but a judge ruled that his life sentence rendered him “civilly dead.”

The couple’s son, William, who was only a year old when his mother was murdered, eventually inherited the full estate in 1954.

Lonergan served 22 years before being released and deported to Canada in 1965. He died in 1986, having lived out the final decades of his life in relative obscurity.

P.S. Allan Levine wrote a gripping book about the case, Details are Unprintable: Wayne Lonergan and the Sensational Cafe Society Murder.

Worth a Listen

The Haystack Murder  (Buried Bones)

One night in September 1923, farmers in Lodi, California, investigated a burning haystack and discovered the scorched body of a man, his hands bound. Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes dive into a mystery that begins as a simple robbery-gone-wrong but takes a dark turn. After the wife of a prominent rancher identifies the body as her husband, authorities begin to suspect the rancher isn’t dead at all, leaving one haunting question—whose body was in the fire?

Murder at 31 Bond Street  (Historical True Crime)

Travel back to 1857 New York and the violent death of Harvey Burdell. Podcaster Lizzie (who goes by her first name only) explains how a wealthy dentist was found strangled and stabbed 15 times in his office. Suspicion immediately fell on his landlady, Emma Cunningham, but the case shifted when she produced a marriage certificate and claimed she was carrying the victim’s child.

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