
The Killer Surgeon
By Edward S. Sullivan
Edited and additional material by Guy Hadleigh
This story is in Nearly Forgotten True Crimes: 7 Infamous Cases Revisited (Vintage Crime Series Book 3). Available on Amazon Kindle by clicking here
THE ERRATIC Los Angeles River, bone-dry most of the year but flashing into an occasional torrent, is the subject of jokes today since its bed and banks from the San Fernando Valley to the sea have been concreted to end the flood menace. Its brief trickle or deluge now flows decorously down the long straight concrete channel, which most of the time doesn't even look like a river bed and is the dry sunbaked scene of hot-rod races and similar events.
But a few years ago the river was no joke. Storms in the mountains were likely to send it raging overnight, inundating hundreds of acres of farms and lowland homes southeast of the city, to diminish again just as quickly. Receding flood waters, after heavy rains had ushered in a boisterous April, left a litter of debris for miles along the soggy banks and bottoms. Pieces of broken furniture, lumber, old tires, all sorts of things washed down from the upland communities lay forlornly in the reeds, potential treasure-trove for the industrious little bands of lowland dwellers who made a regular thing of river salvage, for meager profits.
By noon on the crisp spring morning of April 4th, the air clear and electric and the mountains etched against a vivid blue sky after the storm, the river level was falling rapidly. Juan Mandriquez and his son, 14-year-old Ramon, set out from their home on Wright Road in Lynwood, near Long Beach, to comb the west bank for items of possible salvage value.
It was young Ramon who spotted a large square box floating downstream "Mira, Padre—that looks like a brand new box, with the lid nailed on! Must be something in it!”
Father and son waded into the shallows and tried to reach the box with their long poles, but it was too far out and was being carried along too swiftly.
Regretfully, they watched the intriguing mystery box float farther from their reach and become a bobbing speck disappearing in the direction of the ocean. Then, as they turned back, they glimpsed a strange object about a hundred yards behind the box and equally inaccessible without a boat. It was something grayish white and long, and it danced like a cork in the turbulent muddy flood water.
"Wonder what that is?" Ramon shaded his eyes with his hand and squinted at the peculiar piece of flotsam.
"Lots of funny things floating down the river today,” Juan Mandriquez shrugged. "Could be almost anything. We can't bother with it. Come on, let's get busy."
Father and son spent the afternoon without much luck in their plodding search for salvage, working downstream as the river waters rapidly ebbed, and at dusk they were turning homeward when sharp-eyed Ramon pointed to a grayish something lying snagged in a clump of marsh reeds, half in, half out of water.
"Look, Dad! There's that thing we saw floating behind that box—remember?”
They worked their way through the sticky mud to investigate, and a moment later they dropped their burdens and stood sinking to their ankles in the ooze, hastily crossing themselves as they stared with bulging eyes at the frightful thing in the rushes.
It was the headless, armless and legless torso of a woman, completely nude—a grisly hulk cast up by the waters.
Forgetting their salvage hoard, father and son splashed and scrambled back over the flats and up the bank to the road where they hailed a passing motorist, who heard their terrified story and drove them to the office of Constable Roselle in nearby Compton.
The suburban constable flashed the electrifying word to the headquarters of Sheriff William I. Traeger in downtown Los Angeles, and shortly after the river salvagers had guided him back in the gathering darkness to the lonely spot in the marshes, they were joined by a party of deputies from the sheriff’s Homicide Detail and the coroner’s office, followed by a carload of newspapermen.
It was an eerie scene in the desolate mud-flats as they examined the butchered torso under the glow of flashlights. There wasn’t much they could determine. The gruesome find lay like a broken marble statue, dark gashes where arms, legs and head had been.
"I'd say it was a young girl about 20." one of the coroner’s men pronounced, "and she hasn't been in the water very long. Maybe a day or so.”
Juan Mandriquez and his son told them about the mysterious looking nailed-up box that had preceded the torso down the river, and the officers agreed that it very likely contained the head and the missing members. A party of men went downstream to search for it, without much hope in the darkness, while the severed trunk was loaded into the coroner’s black van and removed to the county morgue.
There Dr. A. F. Wagner, chief autopsy surgeon, began his examination at once, while Captain William J. Bright, sheriff's Homicide Chief, looked on. Dr. Wagner confirmed that the well-preserved torso appeared to be that of a girl or young woman, between the approximate ages of 17 and 25 years, of slight build, probably standing in life about 5 feet, 5 inches, and weighing 118 pounds. Her complexion was light, clear and milky. Hair in the armpits was dark brown, giving an index to that of the missing head. Unless body and face were badly mismatched, the girl must have been very beautiful.

Chief Smith and Captain Bright can’t link skull of 45 year old woman with torso of young girl
Other than the obvious and horrid dismemberment, there were no marks of external violence on the body itself and the cause of the death was not apparent. The doctor judged the victim had been dead some 36 to 48 hours, and in the water just about that length of time. The flesh was unblemished, there were no operation scars, moles nor other identifying marks.
"This was an expert job of dissection.” the veteran surgeon commented as he studied the mute evidence of murder under the glaring lights of the autopsy room. “See here—the neck is severed cleanly between the fifth and sixth vertebrae, and in cutting into the flesh of the neck, the killer came within an eighth of an inch of his mark. He knew his anatomy, all right. There was no fumbling or hacking."
"What sort of tool would you say was used?” Captain Bright wondered.
“Hard to tell, but it looks almost like a professional job, with a scalpel and surgical saw, or their equivalents."
Bright assigned deputies to check the files on missing girls. In cooperation with the Los Angeles Police Department, throughout the night they contacted a score of families that had filed reports, and a dozen anguished relatives viewed the grisly remains but shook their heads mutely.
By morning, as the headline news spread, there was no need for further seeking out of relatives. The sheriff’s office was deluged with reports and inquiries from parents, husbands, friends and neighbors of missing girls and young women. Several wandering girls even called in to identify themselves and relieve their parents of anxiety.
Scores of civilian volunteers joined a posse of 50 deputies and made a thorough search of the lower reaches of the river, using boats as well as patrolling both banks, probing every clump of reeds in search of the missing box. After a day-long futile hunt they decided it must have floated out to sea. The Coast Guard was alerted and beach patrolmen kept their eyes open.
Sheriff Traeger meanwhile assigned additional men to Captain Bright's detail, as they ran down scores of reports including hysterical stories of mystery men seen carrying ominous bundles or boxes through the streets at night.
One suburbanite turned in by a suspicious neighbor had a bad time till he proved that he had been lugging a dress from home for his wife.
Telephone calls and letters poured in day by day from all over the western states, and the morgue continued to be besieged by people with legitimate inquiries as well as the curious, for the peculiar horror of a dismemberment murder always creates a great public stir. Newspaper stories brought results.
Deputy Sheriff Frank Gompert, the crime lab technician, had his hands full with checking out possible identifications. Careful calculations of the slain girl's probable height and weight enabled him to eliminate many possibilities on the basis of description and photographs. Dr. Wagner’s estimate of the age also narrowed it down. The autopsy surgeon completed his examination, still unable to determine the cause of death. Principal further information in his final report was that the dead girl, while she might have been married, had never borne any children. Neither was she the victim of an abortionist, as had been theorized.

Crime Lab Technician Deputy Gompert
Then there was the matter of the torso's lack of scars or blemishes, which served further as an index for elimination. In several cases, physicians who had attended young women now missing were called in to examine the remains. Most possibilities were checked out, but several remained open and the Homicide detectives patiently followed them up.
An important guide for the technician was the hair from the armpits, strands of which he extracted and put under a microscope. Gompert announced that specimens of hair for comparison, while not positive, might provide a clue to identification. He was immediately flooded with samples of hair of all hues and varieties, belonging to missing girls—baby curls taken from trunks, long braids preserved when hair was bobbed, treasured ringlets in keepsakes and lockets.
Many he discarded at once on the basis of color, for the slain girl's hair was definitely dark brown. Other specimens he tested with microscope and chemicals. Again, a few possibilities remained for active investigation.
Captain Bright's men and the city police, following up every lead, located more than a dozen missing young women as by-products of the murder investigation. A man whose bride had disappeared was picked up and held for questioning when neighbors informed the Homicide detectives that he had threatened to "blow her up," Her description fitted that of the river victim; the young husband was jittery and evasive, and Bright began to think he really had something—till the missing wife showed up indignantly at the Hall of Justice to demand her husband’s release. As one possibility after another petered out, a squad of deputies was assigned to examine every shack and shed along the river in its upper reaches, in search of bloodstains or other clue to the place where the body had been cut up. River habitués and transients were questioned.
But days went by without any further development, the inquiries dwindled to a trickle, and it began to look as though the Lynwood Torso Mystery was to go down in the books as one of Southern California's unsolved murder riddles. The Jane Doe torso, treated with preservatives, was kept in a special refrigerated viewing compartment at the morgue, but not many people came to look at it.
The torso case had long since vanished from the news columns and the Homicide men were routinely checking out belated inquiries from other parts of the country, when six weeks later, on the sunny afternoon of May 18th, it was revived in grotesque and dramatic fashion.
An excited and almost incoherent housewife telephoned Police Chief Harry R. Smith of the small town of Bell, a few miles up the river from Lynwood. “Some boys—they're parading down Florence Avenue with a human head-on a stick!"
This was a new one on the veteran chief, who had all but forgotten the torso sensation under the press of other police work, and it sounded like a hysterical false alarm of some sort-Probably the boys had a dummy head or a mask. Who ever heard of a human head on a stick, on the main street of quiet suburban Bell in broad daylight? Nevertheless, Chief Smith had to do his duty, so with a sigh he put on his cap and climbed into his patrol car.
But it proved no false alarm. Smith caught up with the boys at the busy intersection of Florence and Atlantic Boulevard—a little band of half a dozen serious-faced youngsters in a tight defensive knot, surrounded by a growing crowd of excited elders. The boys’ leader, a sturdy 10-year-old, held the gruesome trophy—a human skull with bits of mummified flesh adhering—aloft on a three-foot stick.
“Where did you get that, sonny?" the chief asked the boy mildly.
“We found it, down by the river where we were hunting frogs!"
Smith persuaded the lads to take a ride in his police car. They let him take the skull off the stick, which had been thrust through the jaw. He held the macabre brown thing gingerly at arm's length and inspected it. It had apparently been lying in the open for some time, but a few tufts of hair clung to the scraps of leathery scalp, and the incongruously white teeth seemed to be almost intact. No telling whether it was the head of a man or a woman.
Smith put the severed skull in a sack he obtained from a storekeeper, and notified the sheriff's office, for the river was in county territory. Then he had the willing boys guide him out along the road to the river bottoms, where they pointed out the exact spot where they had found their grisly prize, on a small muddy island left by the receding waters.
When the latest grim yield of the river was brought to Dr. Wagner's office at the morgue late that afternoon, the autopsy surgeon, after brief scrutiny, pronounced it to be the skull of a woman between 40 and 50 years old.
"I judge it to be a small-boned woman, rather than a man, by the small cranial cavity, the narrow lower jaw, and the small proportion of the face in relation to the cranium," Dr. Wagner explained to Captain Bright.
"As for the age, we can estimate that from the degree of ossification-hardening, that is—of the bones. Then there are certain characteristics of the lower jawbone that change with the different periods of life. And the sutures on top of the skull—they close up between 25 and 50, and here they're almost completely closed.”
"Then this skull doesn't belong to the Lynwood torso?" Bright queried, frowning as he eyed the dark brown tufts of hair. "We've got two unidentified victims, then?”
"That's right. The torso is that of a young girl, and this head belongs to a mature woman. But it shouldn't go unidentified very long, with all this dental work to go on. That’s another indication of her age, by the way, a young girl would hardly have all these gold fillings and those crowns.”
"Can you tell how long the victim has been dead? Any indication of the cause?”
The autopsy surgeon shrugged. "Hard to tell how long. Anywhere from a few weeks to a few months. I’d say a month anyway. The cause is right here—this fracture above the right temple. She was hit with some sort of heavy instrument, probably a hammer."
Late the next day Captain Bright and Chief Criminal Deputy Harry Wright decided to explore a new angle that had occurred to them: to make a quiet check of the medical and embalming schools, on the outside chance that the dismembered remains had been thrown in the river by students as a macabre prank. This possibility had been discussed and rejected in the case of the torso, since it seemed too freshly dead to have come from a dissection room. But the browned skull, traditional student prop for practical jokes, was another matter.
Deputies were starting their canvass of the medical schools for missing cadavers, when Dr. Wagner telephoned and asked Bright to step over to his office down the hall right away.
He led the puzzled detective to a white-topped table where the Lynwood torso lay—with the Bell skull neatly fitted into place on the severed neck!
"Then—?”
"Yes. That’s where it belongs. There's only one Jane Doe after all. You see, the bones of the skull are a much more positive index of age than those of the body, which vary considerably with the individual. And in this case, the torso was so well preserved and the texture of the skin so fine and youthful that I just hadn't examined the bones too closely.
"Even at that, she must have been a remarkable woman, to keep herself in such shape. In life, she probably looked 15 years younger than she was. But the skull tells the story: our victim was in her middle 40s. Bill. She wasn't a young girl at all."
This startling news meant that the investigation had to go back to its beginning again. Bright’s men dug out of the files a score or more of still-open March and April missing persons reports and inquiries that had previously been passed over when they were interested only in young women from 17 to 25.
Technician Gompert confirmed that the hairs of the skull were of the same color and general characteristics as those from the torso's armpits; and now he enlisted the aid of University of Southern California dental experts in preparing a detailed chart of the slain woman’s teeth, which was given wide prominence in the newspapers, with an appeal to dentists to search their records.
Three days after the latest find, scores of reports had been checked out, the dismembered body still lay unidentified, and Chief Wright had ordered several thousand circulars printed for distribution to dentists throughout the nation, when a man came to Captain Bright's office with still another report on a missing woman.
He was afraid the river victim might be his sister. Laura Belle Sutton, well-to-do 45-year-old divorcee missing since the end of March from her home at 2012 West 30th Street on the southwest side of Los Angeles.
"The description fits her. Laura was a beautiful woman who looked a lot younger than her age. And that dental work—I'm no expert, but it sounds like some of the work she had done in the last few years. Her dentist was Dr. Edwin C. Hyde. He has an office downtown here."

Laura Bell Sutton – missing – was it her skull young boys were found playing with?
The busy Homicide captain had listened to many such stories in the past six weeks, but this one had an impressive ring of truth, and somehow the name Laura Belle Sutton seemed familiar.
When their visitor had gone, the deputies cheeked through the files and found where the name Laura Belle Sutton had cropped up previously. On May 17th, just a day before the skull was found, her disappearance had been reported to the Los Angeles police by one Frank F. Westlake, who described himself as a close friend of the missing divorcee and spokesman for several other anxious friends who had been trying vainly to locate her. The slain woman’s brother had mentioned Westlake as one of the friends to whom he had spoken.

Frank F. Westlake – Dismembered his victim with surgical skill
At the time of the police report, of course, the 45-year-old woman was not linked with the Lynwood torso; there was no suspicion of murder, and Westlake had expressed the opinion that she had run away for personal reasons. He, too, had mentioned her brooding over her mother’s death, and thought perhaps she had simply wanted to get away from things for a while. “But she left everything behind her, and there are some business affairs that have to be taken care of. I thought it best to make an official report."
The police had sent a copy of this report to the sheriff's office, where it had not attracted much attention and was shortly forgotten in the excitement over finding of the head.
Deputies Gray and Allen called on Dr. Hyde and showed him the dental chart. He produced Mrs. Sutton's record card from his file cabinet and frowned as he compared them. 'This certainly looks like some of my work, gentlemen." he finally pronounced. "You understand, Mrs. Sutton hasn’t visited me for more than a year, and she may have had some other work done since then, by someone else. But that porcelain-faced Richmond crown on the upper right incisor, in combination with those gold fillings —"
The dentist accompanied the two deputies to the morgue and examined the skull at first-hand. Several molars were missing, but the remaining teeth checked exactly with Dr. Hyde’s chart, plus a couple of unrecorded fillings. Hyde was almost sure that the Richmond crown was his work; and Frank Gompert agreed that the number of check-points made it virtually certain that the severed head belonged to Laura Belle Sutton.
‘To be positive." the technician said, "I'd like to have some samples of Mrs. Sutton’s hair for comparison. We should be able to find some around her house. A vacuum cleaner would do the trick."
Before taking up this suggestion. Gray and Allen, joined by Lieutenant W. C. Allen of the Missing Persons Bureau, drove out to interview relatives and friends of the vanished divorcee, whose names her brother and Frank Westlake had supplied. In a short time they had accumulated considerable thought provoking information on Laura Belle's rather complicated life history.
She was described as a fragilely beautiful woman who looked not more than 30, with large innocent blue eyes and not a single streak of gray in her lustrous dark brown hair. Women envied her creamy complexion and trim, petite figure, and she took extreme care of herself, with frequent visits to the beauty parlor.
By nature vivacious, happy and gregarious, the childless Laura Belle had led an active social life since her divorce in 1927 from a prosperous young Beverly Hills man, from whom she had been separated for some time before the divorce.
She continued to occupy the large bungalow on West 30th Street, in the polite neighborhood where they had lived for six years, and got along comfortably on the alimony as well as the income from some investments of her own.
An old friend, Louis Neal, a mechanic who worked at night, occupied the garage apartment behind the house and Mrs. Sutton cooked his meals for him. At first she told people she just wanted to have a man around the place for protection, but in the past year she had confided that she and Neal planned to be married.
Frank Westlake, who lived not far away, was an older man she had met a year or so before. He visited her often and they went out together on occasion. It was understood that the reputedly wealthy retired businessman, who dabbled in contracting and made a hobby of carpentry, was more or less a fatherly adviser to the lively divorcee. But again the detectives heard rumors of romantic attachment; she had told several friends recently that she might marry Westlake, who was a recent widower.
There was also talk of renewed acquaintance with an old boyfriend from World War I days, to whom she had been engaged before she married the handsome Sutton. Apparently Laura Belle had led a full life, and took some innocent pleasure in giving out piecemeal and contradictory reports on her romances, to keep her women friends and relatives guessing.
The investigators talked to Sutton, who said he hadn't seen his ex-wife for about six months, but that she had called him on the telephone several times when he was late with his alimony payments. He had last spoken with her late in March, he said. Sutton emphasized that they were on good terms, and their talks had been friendly. He had no idea what had become of her.
Gray and Allen also interviewed the missing woman's sister, who said she had last seen Laura at their mother's funeral in February. They had talked on the telephone several times since then, and Laura had been extremely depressed over the death of their mother; but she had said nothing about going away. Sutton and the sister had had several visits and phone calls from both Neal and Westlake, inquiring about the missing brunette divorcee.
Laura Belle’s attorney, Willedd Andrews, had apparently been the last to see her. She had called at his office at Fourth and Spring Streets on the afternoon of March 29th, he said, and asked his advice about going to see the judge who had granted her the divorce in Ventura, 75 miles north of Los Angeles, to ask for increased alimony. Andrews advised her that it would be all right to visit the judge by herself, and she said she planned to do so the next day.
“She appeared to be upset about something.” Andrews recalled. “It wasn’t the alimony matter, and she wouldn't tell me what it was. I walked downstairs with her and helped her onto a Spring Street car, southbound. She said she was going to visit her sister."
But Laura Belle had not arrived at her sister's house that afternoon. Her sister had no idea what she might have wanted to see her about. Neither had Laura ever shown up in Ventura —Andrews had checked with the judge.
The lawyer said Laura had $450 in in her purse when she visited his office. She had happened to mention the amount. "Laura always used to keep about $500 at home or in her handbag. She said she liked to have ready cash on hand. She was a bit careless that way—a year or so ago she was robbed of about $1000 worth of Liberty Bonds she kept in an envelope at home."
The Homicide men drove out to the silent bungalow on West 30th Street. Lou Neal had moved out a couple of weeks before, and the next-door neighbor had the key. The woman explained that Lou had taken Laura's personal belongings, including her canary birds, over to Westlake’s house for safekeeping until she should return.
They went through the decorously furnished house, which was stripped of clothing, documents and all personal articles, but found nothing that might provide a clue to the divorcee’s disappearance. However, recalling Frank Gompert’s comment about the hair, Gray emptied the bag of the vacuum cleaner that stood in a closet and found the required sample all ready for them: a twisted and knotted strand of long brown hair taken up by the cleaner along with the household dust. The neighbor confirmed that Laura had employed no cleaning woman and the hair must be hers.
It was evening now, and since the deputies already had Frank Westlake’s story in his report, they looked up Lou Neal, first of the two apparently friendly love rivals. They located him through his company and found him eating lunch, reading the latest newspaper account of the torso mystery.
"I’ve been expecting you fellows since Frank made that report," he told them. "I'm glad you're finally getting busy and looking for Laura. But you're on the wrong track if you think she’s this murder victim. Laura’s alive and around here somewhere. Why, she’s been putting flowers on her mother’s grave every few days!"
The mechanic told the officers he had last seen Mrs. Sutton at 3 A.M. on March 29th, when he came home from work and went to the kitchen to eat the sandwich she customarily left out for him Laura called to him from her darkened bedroom and asked him to bring her a glass of water. He did so, said goodnight to her and went to his own apartment. When he got up that afternoon, there was no sign of her about the house.
He didn’t see her the next day, and two nights later he found a note from Frank Westlake on the kitchen table, asking him to call as soon as possible at the older man's house at 1810 ½: West 11th Street.
When Neal drove over the following morning. Westlake wanted to know if he had seen or heard from Laura Belle. She had planned to go to Ventura on the afternoon of the 29th Westlake said, and had been due back by train the next night. Westlake had gone to the depot to meet her, but she wasn't on the train. He was seriously worried, because Laura had been carrying $450 she had drawn out of the bank that morning. He had been visiting her home several times daily —he had a key—and feeding the canaries.
After a week went by with still no word, the two men, forgetting their love rivalry in their mutual anxiety, began to make inquiries among the divorcee's other friends and relatives. No one had had any word from her. Westlake drove up to Ventura, thinking she might have decided to stay over, but found no trace of her at the hotels.
By this time the papers were headlining the torso case, but Neal and Westlake never connected it with Laura Belle, since the victim was described as not more than 25 years old.
Recalling the divorcee's inconsolable grief over her dead mother and how she had visited the grave every few days, they went out to San Gabriel Cemetery. To their great relief they found a bunch of fresh red carnations. Laura's favorite flower, in a vase at the mother’s grave. This proved to them that the elusive woman was alive and somewhere near.
"I took a week off work and hung around the cemetery every day," Neal told the deputies. "I put a big bunch of roses on the grave, with a note to Laura in the middle of them, asking her to get in touch with me. When I came back from lunch one day, my note was gone and there was a fresh bouquet of carnations! That was about April 15th—so you see, that body in the morgue can’t belong to Laura.”
But the note didn’t elicit any response, and when another week had gone by, the two men took it on themselves to move Laura's things to Westlake's house. Neal knew Laura had entrusted Frank with many business affairs—in fact they had a joint bank account for investment purposes—and he was sure she wouldn't mind. Neal himself stayed with Westlake for a while, but had recently moved to a furnished room. Westlake took care of Laura's utility bills and saw that the lawn and garden of the deserted bungalow were kept up.
The voluble mechanic readily told the history of his association with the grass widow. He had met her four years before, he said, when he was selling cakes and cookies from door to door in the neighborhood. The unhappy housewife told him her troubles, and he became a frequent visitor. When the Suttons separated, Neal moved into the garage apartment at Laura's invitation—she didn't want to be alone. He insisted their friendship had remained on a platonic basis until after her divorce. He was in the habit of turning over his $20 weekly paycheck to her for his room and board, and kept only his tips for pocket money.
They had talked of marriage after the divorce, but complications arose when in 1928 Laura met Frank Westlake. The elderly part-time building contractor dropped around to play cards at night or to do little carpentry jobs at the house in the daytime, and he seemed to hold some sort of magnetic fascination for the beautiful divorcee.
I asked her right out if she was in love with Frank," Neal related, “and she said no, she still wanted to marry me. But she kept putting it off, and Frank hung around more and more. I didn't like, it and we had a few arguments, but there wasn’t much I could do. Laura was a free woman, after all!”
Next morning, while Gompert was running his microscopic and chemical tests of the hair sample, comparing it with hair from the mummified head, the Homicide deputies and the Missing Persons detective interviewed Frank P. Westlake at his home.
The short, wiry, 57-year-old gray-haired man expressed horrified incredulity when they told him they believed Laura Belle Sutton was the torso victim. Like the mechanic he had taken the fresh flowers on her mother's grave as absolute proof that she was simply staying undercover somewhere around Los Angeles, although he knew of no reason why she should behave so erratically.
“I last saw her on the morning of the 29th, about 10:30,’' Westlake told the officers. “We met at the bank at Seventh and Spring, to draw some money from our joint savings account. I drew out $750 and gave her $450 in in cash. She didn't say what she needed it for—only that she was going to Ventura and would be back the next night. I was to meet her at the train.”
He was puzzled to learn that Laura had visited her attorney in Los Angeles that same afternoon and spoken of going to Ventura the next day. He was at a loss to explain this discrepancy.
Like the mechanic, Westlake freely discussed his relationship with the attractive divorcee. He had met her through mutual friends, and she had sought his experienced advice about investing some money she had inherited. With his guidance Laura had made some profitable stock market deals, and had bought a business lot in the fast-growing Westwood district. He more or less had come to manage all of Laura's business affairs. Westlake told the officers modestly. In addition to the joint bank account they had a joint safe deposit box.
Love? Yes, you could call it that. Westlake liked to do things for Laura. For two weeks he had sat up every night with her dying mother, and Laura vowed eternal gratitude. Yes, they had discussed marriage, but both wanted to be sure before making the jump.
Did Westlake know of any enemies Laura might have had? Assuming she was the murder victim, did he suspect anyone?
No, the little man frowned thoughtfully, he couldn't name anyone, but there was a thing the officer; should know about. One night early in March he and Laura had been walking down the street near her house when a tough-looking young man accosted them and without a word struck Westlake in the face, knocking him down and breaking his glasses. The fellow started to manhandle Laura but her screams put him to flight. They hadn't reported the incident to the police, disliking notoriety. They thought the attacker must have been a strong-arm robber, a common purse-snatcher. But he hadn't snatched Laura's well-filled purse.
Thanking Westlake for his information, the sleuths headed back to headquarters, where they found Captain Bright plunged into gloom by surprising and disconcerting news from the crime lab. “Gompert says the hair isn't Mrs. Sutton's,” he told them. “Something about the structure of the shafts. A capillary canal down the center of the dead woman’s hair. None in the Sutton samples. Different shade, too, under the microscope. Says there's no doubt about it. So now we're back where we started!"
The crestfallen Homicide deputies shelved their investigation of the missing Laura Belle, and went back to the tedious work of trying to identify the dismembered Jane Doe. However, Police Lieutenant Allen, in whose jurisdiction the Sutton disappearance case lay, followed it up actively. Struck by the fact that the missing woman hadn't come forward although the newspapers had blazoned her name in connection with the torso, he ordered circulars bearing her photograph and description circulated throughout the West. And he assigned men to interview a long list or her friends and relatives.
Deputies Allen and Gray meanwhile busied themselves with a promising new inquiry from the police of Seattle, Washington. A woman of the northern city thought the torso murder victim might be her sister, who had vanished in 1927 after leaving Seattle for Los Angeles, on her way to Chicago. The description fitted, and the dental chart was very similar.
Captain Bright's men were endeavoring to trace the cold trail of this woman, when the next afternoon came an electrifying call from Lieutenant Allen. ‘‘Bill, I’ve been talking to Laura Sutton's hairdresser. It seems she wore a switch to disguise her thinning hair! There’s a good chance that sample that threw you off came from the switch. I've just gone through her effects, over at Westlake's house, and I've found some of her own hair that she was saving I'm bringing it right in!"
This time Gompert’s test was affirmative. The new hair sample matched that of the slain woman in every particular. To be doubly sure. Bright called in Mrs. Sutton’s husband and her physician. Dr. John Clayton, to view the remains. Both said the torso, with its square shoulders and narrow hips, resembled hers completely. And the mummified ears of the skull were pierced for earrings, as Laura’s had been.
The sheriff’s men were now thoroughly convinced that the murdered woman was Laura Belle Sutton, and the investigation went ahead in high gear. Deputies set out to make a thorough check on the backgrounds of both Frank Westlake and Lou Neal, as well as probing still further into the brunette beauty's past and talking to her old boyfriend from World War I. Several friends confirmed the story of the mystery attack on the street.
Now that it was definitely a murder case. Westlake with apparent reluctance told the officers that he strongly suspected his rival, Neal. The young mechanic was extremely jealous, he said, and on occasion had displayed a violent temper. Westlake had advised Laura to evict him. And he added the ominous sounding information that Neal had once worked as a butcher.
On the strength of this, Neal was invited to headquarters for questioning and willingly came along. “Why the old goat!" he exploded when he gathered that Westlake had inspired this action. “What motive would I have for killing Laura? Frank is the one who profits by her death!"
The mechanic revealed that Westlake, in an expansive mood shortly after Laura disappeared, had shown him a deed conveying the Westwood property to him, some stock certificates the divorcee had signed over to him, and a bill of sale for her household furniture. There was also a $500 life insurance policy naming him beneficiary. "After all, we’re going to be married soon, you know!" Westlake had explained with a grin.
Neal had thought it odd that Laura hadn't told him about these transfers —especially since the lot had been bought largely with his paychecks. And now he divulged an incident that he hadn’t seen to mention previously, lest he cast unjust suspicion on Westlake.
On March 26th, talking to his employer's bookkeeper, he had learned quite by accident that his last four paychecks had been endorsed and cashed by Frank Westlake. When he asked Laura about the checks in Westlake's presence, she answered evasively that she must have misplaced them. Neal then took the checks from his pocket and confronted her with his rival’s signature.
“Certainly I signed those checks!” Westlake flared up. “There’s nothing wrong with that, young man! I'm Mrs. Sutton's business manager, and I deposited them in our joint account.”
As they continued to argue, Laura Belle suddenly pulled a revolver from the sideboard drawer and put it to her head. “I can’t stand this sordid wrangling! I'll shoot myself!" she cried. Neal wrested the gun away from her, unloaded it, and left without further words.
“And as for his telling you I used to be a butcher." the aroused mechanic added, "sure I was a butcher once, but that doesn’t mean I go around cutting up people! That's more in Frank Westlake’s line. Don't you know that he used to be a doctor—a surgeon?”
Investigation confirmed Neal’s story of the checks. Further, inquiry at the bank showed that the $750 withdrawal, made on Westlake’s signature on March 29th, had reduced the balance to a few dollars. And county records revealed that Westlake had recorded the deed to Laura’s lot in his name only two weeks after the torso was found.
Now it was Frank Westlake's turn to be invited down to headquarters. He expressed surprise that there was any question about the checks, bill of sale, deed and certificates. “Naturally, I've been handling all Laura's affairs. We were going to be married!" As for the furniture, they had planned to sell it and move to a new house. He said he alone had signed for the $750 on the 29th, because Laura had her gloves on.
Grudgingly, he agreed to let the authorities examine the transferred documents, and gave a specimen of his own handwriting. He also let them take Laura Belle s old revolver, which was among her effects. He modestly confirmed that he had formerly been a surgeon in Pike County, Illinois, and later in the army medical corps. Wearying of medical practice, he had retired some 15 years before and come to California. Only a few close friends knew of his former profession.
Westlake was sent home with an admonition to hold himself available for further questioning, and two deputies tailed him unobtrusively.
Frank Gompert examined the .38 revolver, but his findings were negative; it hadn't been fired for years. More encouraging was the report of J. Clark Sellers, eminent handwriting expert retained by the sheriff, who said Mrs. Sutton’s signatures on all the documents were forgeries apparently written by Frank Westlake.
Brought in again and confronted with this evidence, the cold-eyed ex-doctor shrugged it off. “Yes, I signed her name. She gave me permission. She didn't want to be bothered by business details. She told me to sign her name to anything I wanted. We trusted each other completely, you understand.”
"Yes, I can see that." Captain Bright remarked dryly. "After all, you were going to be married!”
Now that the hunt was in full cry, further incriminating facts piled up against the glib-tongued little man. A friend of his late wife came forward with a dress Westlake had given her early in April, saying it belonged to a woman friend who had died. The dress was identified as one of Laura Belle’s.

Deputy Chester Allen exhibits a dress belonging to the victim
More significant, deputies located an Alhambra florist who identified Westlake's photo as that of a man who had bought red carnations on several occasions in April and May— thus accounting for the fresh flowers on the grave which had fooled Lou Neal.
The case was building up, and Bright was discussing with his superiors the advisability of an arrest on the circumstantial evidence in hand, when on May 24th Dr. Westlake came to the Homicide office and with a broad smile displayed a note he said he had just received from Laura Belle, mailed two days before in Arizona. Neatly typewritten, it read: "My Dear: What did you do with the furniture and the birdies? If stored, where? Is Mr. Neal still in town and what shift is he working? Please answer these questions in any of the personal columns. Will see you soon."
The note was signed with the penciled initials "L.B.S." The doctor didn't have the envelope; he said he had thrown it away in his excitement, but assured Captain Bright that it had been postmarked Holbrook, Arizona. He was convinced the note was genuine, and planned to insert the reply as directed.
Though Bright didn’t take much stock in the note, he telegraphed the Holbrook police to look for a woman of Laura's description. Clark Sellers shortly reported that the initials were not in Laura's handwriting—but neither were they in Frank’s, and the little ex-surgeon was not known to be proficient at typewriting.
That same night, Deputies Gray and Allen tailed Dr. Westlake when he drove to his son’s home in Pasadena, and watched him go surreptitiously to the garage at the rear before entering the house. When he had gone they searched the garage. Up in the rafters they found a set of surgical instruments with the knives and scalpels missing. It was wrapped in a newspaper dated March 24th.
While significant enough, this find didn’t constitute direct evidence; and there was still the matter of the “Arizona" note. However, this was shortly cleared up. A friend and distant relative of Westlake’s came forward to disclose that the ex-physician had asked him to type and sign the note for him, "to play a joke on a friend." He produced the original copy, scrawled in pencil, which Westlake had given him and which he had prudently retained in his safe.
He added the sinister information that his grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. W. H. Brown, who had shared their home with Westlake and his wife, a relative of theirs, had both died suddenly within a short time in 1927, leaving their entire estate including the house to Lizzie Westlake. Within a few months Mrs. Westlake followed them in sudden death, and cold-eyed Frank came into sole possession. Death certificates of all three, who had been in good health, were signed by a doctor friend of Westlake's. Other relatives were highly suspicious at the time and had gone to the district attorney, but he advised them there was no evidence on which to act.
This story of the typed note was sufficient to tip the scales of evidence. The D. A. agreed with Sheriff Traeger that it was time to move in, and Gray and Allen at long last arrested the gray-haired ex-doctor and booked him on suspicion of murder.
Clamming up now, his steel-gray eyes flashing hostility. Westlake retained an attorney who sought his release on the ground that the corpus delicti had not been established—that there was no proof that Laura Belle was the torso victim.
The D. A. soon remedied this. Gompert, City Chemist Rex Welch and other exports had been working with Laura’s dentist and physician, quietly building up their identification evidence. Now Coroner Frank Nance called a belated inquest and the medicos and technicians presented their testimony. The jurors returned a verdict that the remains were those of Laura Belle Sutton, and that she had been killed with a blunt instrument with homicidal intent. Westlake was formally charged with murder and pleaded not guilty.
Other loose ends were shortly tied up. With Westlake safely behind bars. Gompert and Welch, seeking the scene of the murder and dismemberment, made a thorough examination of the accused man’s house. Disconnecting the plumbing fixtures, in the outlet gooseneck of the bathtub they found a quantity of congealed human blood. There was also blood on the wall behind the tub.

Deputies Brewster and Gompert examine suspect’s plumbing – congealed human blood was found
And probing Frank and Laura’s financial records, Bright’s men established that the divorcee had had the $450 in her purse at home several days before the 29th; this indicated that Westlake had withdrawn the whole $750 for himself, probably without her knowledge. They also found that Westlake had paid the premiums on Laura’s life insurance policy. They suspected him of stealing her Liberty Bonds a year before, but couldn't prove it.
Lou Neal, completely exonerated of any suspicion, cooperated fully with the officers in the investigation.
Deputy District Attorney Wayne Jordan summed up the evidence at Westlake’s preliminary hearing Unimpressed by the defendant's contention that Laura Belle was still alive, Municipal Judge R. Morgan Galbreth on June 8th ordered him held for Superior Court trial.
While he awaited trial, information came from authorities of Pike County, Illinois, linking Westlake with still another decapitation murder almost 30 years before. In 1900 the skeleton of long-missing Joseph Van Zandt, a wealthy farmer and patient of Dr. Westlake’s, had been found in a well, the head cut off with surgical instruments. The young doctor, who had benefited by the farmer’s death, fell under suspicion and was questioned by the grand jury, but there was insufficient evidence for indictment.
Other ugly reports from his days of medical practice linked Westlake’s name with the abortion business.
On August 27th, 1929, Westlake went to trial before Superior Judge Walton J. Wood. The gruesome head and torso, with arms and legs still missing, lay in plain view on a table throughout the sessions. Prosecutor Jordan asked the death penalty, contending that the ex-physician had killed Laura Belle for her money and property. He theorized that when the divorcee discovered Westlake had drawn the last $750 from their account, she went to his house to remonstrate, and he slugged her with a hammer and cut up her body in the bathtub. A score of witnesses told their damning stories.
Dr. Westlake's defense was that Laura Belle was still alive. His attorneys challenged identification of the torso, bringing up the original official statement that it was the body of a young woman. Westlake denied the note story as a frame up, and maintained the "L.B S." note was genuine. He repeated his account of the mystery attack on the street.
But the parade of evidence was overwhelming, and on September 8th, after 31 hours deliberation, the jury of nine women and three men found Westlake guilty of murder in the first degree. Due to the circumstantial nature of the case, they recommended life imprisonment rather than the death penalty. Smiling coldly, the gray-haired little man on September 17th heard Judge Wood sentence him to life in San Quentin.
His appeals were denied and he was taken to prison, still maintaining his innocence. He served 14 years of his life sentence, and was an old, sick and broken man when he was released on parole in 1944 at the age of 71. He died on January 30th, 1950, while still on parole.
This story is one of the in Nearly Forgotten True Crimes: 7 Infamous Cases Revisited (Vintage Crime Series Book 3). Available on Amazon Kindle by clicking here