Often dismissed as suburban and quiet โ remember Johnny Carson talking about โbeautiful downtown Burbank?โ โ I didnโt have high hopes when I dived into the archives looking for local crime stories. How wrong I was. My new book True Crime Burbank was the result, and these are five cases that were adapted for the silver screen or had a big movie connection.
So, lights, camera, action โ death!
October 11, 1933
The โCowboy Murderโ saw actor/rider/stuntman/stand-in Tom Bay, 32, allegedly shot in his bedroom by his โsweetheart,โ Alta Lessert, 35. It was prompted by a jealous spat between the pair โ perhaps in relation to the person they had been spending the day with, Mary Miles โ and bullets flew after the trio arrived at Bayโs Burbank home.
Miles testified that Lessert shot Bay, then attempted to shoot herself. Lessert in turn pled self-defense, saying that she and Bay had a fractious relationship, and that he had struck her before.
Bay was certainly known as a mean drunk, and had been suspected of involvement in the 1925 shooting of actor โYakima Jimโ Anson at the Selma Hotel near Gower Gulch, a Hollywood hangout where cowboy actors, often in costume, waited to be hired by the studios.
The jury was utterly deadlocked, and Lessert, whose husband did not join her from Oklahoma for the verdict, walked away a free woman.
March 24, 1934
When residents at the Sterling Arms, near the Warner Bros. Studio, heard gunshots, they thought little of it: crime comedy Midnight Alibi was surely just filming late.
But in one of the apartments, several bullets had been fired into Eric Madison by his angry wife Nellie. She left a โDo Not Disturbโ note on the door and fled the scene โ straight onto the front pages of the scandal-hungry LA newspapers. They derided her for her lack of emotion, and nicknamed her โThe Sphinx.โ
The trial was a sensation, with the prosecution the Madisonโs bed, bloodied sheets and all, into the courtroom, and Nellie was found and sentenced to death โ the first woman to receive that sentence in California history.
She escaped the noose after giving an interview about the abuse she had suffered at Ericโs hands, to say nothing of his drug use and brazen womanizing. Such matters were rarely discussed, and public sympathy swerved in her direction.
After serving eight years Nellie disappeared into obscurity and a final lasting marriage, but her trial had a vital legacy: it imprinted the issue of domestic abuse into future law and criminal investigation.
March 9, 1953
Still the most famous murder in Burbank history, the beating death of elderly Mable Monohan saw three people sent to the gas chamber. One of them, Barbara Graham, was later the subject of a melodramatic but sobering 1958 movie I Want to Live!
Directed by Robert Wise, it saw Susan Hayward take home the Best Actress Oscar for her portrayal of โBloody Babs,โ who was part of a four-man gang that, with Graham using the โmy carโs broken down, can I use your phoneโโ scam to get access, invaded Monohanโs home looking for money that wasnโt there.
All the accused blamed each other, but Grahamโs previous petty crimes paled against her co-accused, all of whom were career criminals, and her good looks, witty comments and outspoken nature were meat for the newspaper grinders.
It was a shock when Graham received the death penalty, and became only the second woman executed by the state of California. The movieโs last sequence of Graham going to her death was credited with helping change public attitudes towards capital punishment.
April 21, 1968
The murder of 22-year-old Cheryl Perveler was given the TV movie treatment by NBC in 1992, and it was based on the book Till Death Us Do Part, which was written by prosecuting District Attorney Vincent Bugliosi โ known worldwide by then for this book Helter Skelter.
The book is rather long, but the case is depressingly familiar. Cheryl Perveler, a newlywed of just seven weeks, was shot in the chest and twice in the head as she parked her car. Her husband Paul, 31, a former LAPD officer and bar owner, was soon arrested, and the motive thought to be a double-dip of insurance money.
It was more than that though, as Paul, who had been having an affair with Kristina Cromwell, 27, was also suspected of killing her husband, Marlin, in 1966. Moreover, his previous wife Lela had been lucky to escape two hit-and-run accidents.
Of course, it emerged that Paul had been behind the wheel then, and that he had shot Marlin Cromwell too. Foolishly, he and Kristina went on a big trip to Las Vegas shortly after Cherylโs murder.
After a long and complicated trial, the jury came back with guilty verdicts for both Paul and Kristina. He escaped execution when the death penalty was struck down in 1972 and died behind bars, while she was paroled in 1976.
June 13, 1979
Burbank does have a historically low crime rate, but it was still a hunting ground for some of the infamous serial murderers of the 1970s and 1980s. One of those, Rodney Alacala, who was christened the โDating Game Killerโ by the media and who committed violent killings across the country, found one of his victims in Burbank.
Jill Parenteau, 21, was found naked on her bathroom floor. She had been sexually assaulted, beaten, and strangled. There were signs of a forced entry, and it appeared that her killer had cut himself while crawling through the window โ a fact that became important many years later.
The 2023 movie Woman of the Hour showed Alcalaโs criminal modus operandi intercut with a re-creation of his appearance on that cheesy game show. Off-screen, Alcala had posed as a photographer and compiled a huge collection of shots of women, teenage girls, and boys, many in sexually explicit poses. He persuaded them to join him at often-isolated locations, and once there, he attacked them.
His criminal record is another story in itself, and it wasnโt until 2010 that, thanks to advances in DNA identification, he was convicted in the death of Parenteau and three other girls murdered in that same period. Alcala died in prison in 2021.
True Crime Burbank by James T. Bartlett is published by History Press. His previous book, The Alaskan Blonde, about an unsolved 1953 murder in Fairbanks, Alaska, was nominated for an Anthony Award. Both are available now.
