The condemnation of this “Mall Venice” was a great victory for the prosecutors. Did they cheat?

Close to the end of his life, the 32 -year -old Parbra Graham announced the execution of his conscience. Her execution by cyanide gas in June 1955 was merciful compared to her crime, as J. Miller Leavy saw it.

Levy won many prominent issues during his career at the Los Angeles Prosecutor’s Prosecutor’s Office, but a few of them attracted greater attention than the issue against women nicknamed “Blood Babs”.

She was in the direction of the streets, copper and the hunger physically, and she was a little creeping and “girl who responds” that remained in the casinos to urge men to drink and gambling. She usually had heroin and a child to feed. In March 1953, accompanied by four men, she participated in the process of burning the domestic invasion of Borbank, which was found and suffocated.

Levi told unavoidable and skillful, with a tendency to theater, that Graham was not only participated in the robbery but was essential to violence. “Barbara Graham has linked the hands of Mabel Monohan behind her back, her pistol skin and left her to death,” told Levy, 85, a column writer in the Times in 1990. “Sending her to the gas room did not bother me at all.”

“For the sake of the people”, a certified history of the provincial prosecutor’s office, burning Levy legend and repeating the claim that Graham is a pistol-the victim’s record. For generations of public prosecutors, they waved on the horizon to the point that when they lost an issue, they mocked, “could win it.”

Maria Clark, who will become one of the most well -known prosecutors Ha A generation during the fateful OJ Simpson case in the mid -1990s, I heard all the stories about Leavy in 14 years in the DA office. She started researching the Graham case for her book “trial by an ambush”, which was published in November. I went to the project with admiration for my opinion – and it appeared with certainty that he had been deceived.

And I concluded that a major witness. He built the prosecution account based on the speech of the participant defendant had a good reason for lying. Clark said that he did illegal things today, such as cultivating the prison laboratory, which won and helped Graham’s love.

“He was a very good lawyer, don’t understand me wrong,” Clark told the Times in a recent interview with him. “But what I did not expect to see was that he was a player who was humiliated.”

From her arrest to her execution, she inspired something from the Grand Parbra Graham, from the era of the afternoon. The newspapers were photographed as cold and bright killers from the pages of the pulp. Sometimes it was “redhead”, sometimes “ice blond”. It was “Venice Mall”. It was “ugly”. “Barbara Graham, a blond ice mountain.”

In Los Angeles Daily Mirror, “This monster was disguised as a woman.” In Herald-Express, “The most beautiful victim was the gas room might have ever claimed.”

That was abandoned by her mother, she was sent, in adolescence, to Ventura School for Girls, a brutal reform school from which she appeared in education in crime. It did not reach high school. It is noisy for a living. I wrote bad checks. It’s theft. It has been seized for possession of drugs, prostitution and Peru. She got married four times. She had three children. She loved jazz.

She was broken, and she tried to raise a child, while working as hard in a home and flexible house in El Mone. A rough appearance named Jack Santo. It was a criminal confederation for the man who was running the gambling house, Amy Perkins. They have heard that the retired Vodville performance, Mabel Monohn, had hidden money in her home safe.

“These men were very bad news,” Clark said. “I think bad news is more than Barbara.”

Monahan’s safety, not only opened its door to anyone, especially the thugs with a difficult appearance. But Graham is beautiful, you may get it inside. Thus, on March 9, 1953, Graham appeared at the door of Monahan with the story that her car had collapsed.

Monohn Graham allowed entry, followed by rioters. In Santo, Perkins, Safecracker Baxter Lorter and John True, whose narration will be approved as a fact by the authorities. The thieves dismissed the house, did not find any safe and left Monohan, pumping with a pillow on her head. “A rich widow was beaten to death in California,” read one title.

The investigators caught shorter in weeks, and his account led them to others. Clark also documented in her book, Perkins description [Monahan] In the temple “with a pistol.

It may be the shortest star of the star in the state if it had not disappeared after a short time. (Perkins was kidnapped at the threat of weapons, according to a witness, and the dead.) The jury did not get his account of the killing.

Leave it correct as a major witness to trial. He got immunity for his test Preserve Monohn said – a finger in Graham said. He said that she carried the victim with the neck with one hand and the pistol enters it with the other.

In the hope of condemning Graham, the authorities planted an informant beside her in Los Angeles County Prison. The factory was Donna Pro, who was in his early twenties and spent time to kill the wrong. I approached Graham. I poured magic. She brought her candy. The prison was alone, and Graham fell to her.

“Hello my love,” Graham wrote to her in one of the many messages obtained. “Your observation was very sweet, dear, but I want you to make sure of your feelings, or I do not want to start something that we could not finish. You are a very beautiful and desirable woman, my dear, and I want you a lot.”

With Graham’s trial approached, she had a desperate problem – no torture – but Prow made a solution. Graham arranged to meet a man who was lying to her. He was claiming that he was with her miles at the Encino Hotel during the killing.

All of this was the preparation of the police. “Siddiq” was a secret police officer named Sam Siriani, and when Levi presented secret records to Graham, he combined the fake mystery-and she admitted that she was with her accused participating in the deadly night-whose credibility was destroyed.

But the defense lawyer in Graham has never had an opportunity to interrogate the ingenuity. Da’s office arranged for her to be released from prison, and to leave California – safely out of defense.

“No one can find it, and the claim was confirmed, and that was illegal. They hidden a major witness,” Clark told the Times. “They would have got the extent of the effort I made to get Barbara to be in line with the wrong Al -Ani scheme. This would have made, that things look a lot different from the jury.”

Public Prosecutor’s residence with painful length on Graham’s love letters to ingenuity.

Clark said: “It was very clear why he did so.” “It distorts her personality in front of the jury. At that time, a lot of grace has not been given to homosexuality of any kind.”

In his closing argument, Levy told the jury that Graham had witnessed the aim of seduction of male jury, and deterring them from their duty to condemn her in the hope that “she could wake up there and look beautiful.” Clark’s tactic found “morally hateful”.

“The law was different at that time, and [they did] She said many things that would be completely reasons to remove them today. “

“I want to live!” Said Oscar Susan Hayard for her sympathetic filming with Graham in the 1958 movie “I want to live!” In it, Graham is punished for challenging time agreements. It is a sexual adventure. It smokes cigarettes with men in dark rooms. It mocked a smart joke in the torment of the policemen. She is a soft heart.

“It was the fiercest jazz generation,” announced the advertising version. “She had a lot of friends, most of them are bad. She was driven by a thousand desires, a few of them were decent. She made a mistake. She stole. But she swore that she was never killed.”

Although Graham denied that she was at the victim’s house, Clark believed that she was He was There – but as it is trapped. It was most likely that Graham is 5 feet and 3, accompanied by four stronger partners than males, some with the records of violence, was Bludgeoner.

Under the criminal murder base, Graham was guilty of any participation in the crime, but in a case dealt with differently, the death penalty may have been avoided.

Graham jury, Santo and Birkins condemned the killing, and the judge was all killed. In San Quinin, one of Graham’s recent requests was to wear a mask when I went to the gas room. She said, “I don’t want to see people.”

Levy was one of the witnesses for her execution, his legend is about to get another degree.

Also attended by the journalist Al Martinez, who will become a column writer in the Times, and after decades, he writes about haunted what he saw with the drop of cyanide and the gas rose.

The adjacent policeman said: “Maple died strongly.”