A British journalist reexamines a cold-case murder from Fairbanks, Alaska in 1953 and uncovers new evidence about the crime.
The Alaskan Blonde: Sex, Secrets, and the Hollywood Story That Shocked America
By James T. Bartlett. Territory Books. 250 pages. $19.99.
A few years ago, James T. Bartlett, a British journalist and historian living in Los Angeles, read about a 70-year-old murder case in the L.A. Times archive: Diane Wells, a beautiful blonde, had been attacked in a home invasion that left her rich husband shot dead. The story soon turned into a sex scandal—and a nationwide media sensation, as police began to doubt Wells’s story and turn their suspicions to a musician believed to be her lover.
Bartlett spent five years looking into the murder and the flawed police investigation and discovered new evidence that helped frame the ending to his book about the crime and investigation.
Below, you’ll find a brief excerpt, which offers a fascinating glimpse of how trials, evidence collection, and forensic science worked in the 1950s.
Inquest No. 285
Fairbanks, Alaska — Tuesday October 20, 1953
Even though there was little question over what caused Cecil’s death, the coroner’s inquest into it was the longest in Fairbanks’ history, and it started on a cloudy morning, October 20, at the Federal Building.
Built in the Art Deco style in 1933, its marble steps, terrazzo floors and bald eagle grillwork over the main doors are still impressive today. It was the third courthouse in this location, and also the home to the US Post Office. Sarah Crawford Isto wrote that many people had post office boxes because home delivery could be irregular, and collecting your mail was a chance to catch up on the local gossip.
The list of witnesses included virtually every person who had been at the Northward Building the morning of October 17, as well as Herb Mensing, newspaper photographer Jim Douthit, and others.
Described as still badly bruised and discolored, Diane took the stand, though before she even spoke her lawyer Walter Sczudlo said she and her friends were being intimidated, and that obvious attempts were being made to implicate her rather than trying to apprehend the two men.
Sczudlo, who also lived at the Northward in apartment 725 and whose wife had been interviewed as part of the investigation, advised her that since she had already given a statement to police, she should avoid incriminating herself and refuse to answer questions from Stevens and the US Territorial Commissioner.
The first real bombshell came when Cecil’s fourth wife Ethel testified that he was “a jealous type of person,” subject to fits of violence when he had been drinking. He had struck her “on numerous occasions” during their married life, even knocking her to the street in public, and once chased her and her mother around waving a pistol — though the strong-willed Ethel had often fought back, too.
Ethel was somewhat of an entrepreneur. Her son Wendell told me that she owned a gift shop in Fairbanks that imported figurines, jewelry, glassware, and fine china, high-end items you couldn’t get unless you took a long flight or a steamship to the department stores of Seattle. She had also wanted to establish an idyllic “Santa Land” in North Pole, a real town some 14 miles outside Fairbanks, and got as far as persuading them to give her five acres of land before the plan ran out of money.
As the inquest dragged on, it became clear that the jury wasn’t able to come to a conclusion about exactly what time Cecil had been killed. They had heard from the witnesses and been taken to see the Wells’ apartment at the Northward, but still they wanted to know more.
Danforth had disagreed on the stand with Dr. McLean, who said that Cecil’s hands were slightly colder than normal when he arrived, whereas Danforth said they were cold. Dr. McLean hadn’t taken Cecil’s liver or rectal temperature, though the comparison of that to the environmental temperature as way to help determine time of death wasn’t common practice at the time.
It might not have mattered anyway, because Danforth also disagreed with Dr. Haggland’s verdict that fixed the time of death as around five hours before the police arrived. Despite his lack of medical training, he insisted that Cecil died shortly before Diane called for help.
His conduct on the stand wasn’t helping, and he visibly bristled when DA Stevens asked him about the “conduct” of the investigation. It was a valid question, as the laboratory technician at the Fairbanks Medical and Surgical Clinic had blamed inadequate equipment for the negative result on the blood samples that Danforth had ordered before sending them to the FBI.
There was no such thing as DNA profiling in 1953, but the public understood that blood came in various types, and that a sample of blood collected from a crime scene could be linked to someone who shared that same group, though that didn’t necessarily make them guilty of anything.
What if the person whose blood was on the tested shoes and/or the pressure cooker button had gone on the run?
What if the person whose blood was on the tested shoes and/or the pressure cooker button had gone on the run? Getting a flight out of Fairbanks wouldn’t have been a problem, but getting suspects back from the Lower 48 always involved red-tape and the need to justify the expense of extraditing the suspect (and maybe an escort) back. The delay had only been a short one, but every minute counts in the immediate aftermath of a killing.
It also wasn’t the only problem with the crime scene forensics.
During the inquest, Officer Thrift admitted that he couldn’t take accurate fingerprints off the liquor bottles because they were “smeared.” Fairbanks didn’t have the resources for specialist forensics officers, let alone the equipment to analyze the results, and while everyone in law enforcement understood this, to the jury and those sitting in the public gallery, it didn’t sound very professional. The fingerprint samples in the FBI file looked fairly clear, at least to my untrained eye.
But appearances can be deceptive, and smeared or not, these fingerprints were later compared to many others.
Danforth also reserved some choice words for Diane. He rejected the notion that she was hysterical or crying, saying she was simply agitated, and added that she smelled of alcohol. He also said that she willingly went to the hospital, rather than insisting Cecil went first, and scored a point when his claim that she had no dirt or foreign matter on her from the African violets and earth in the flowerpot was backed up by two nurses from St. Joseph’s.
Danforth now went on the record dismissing any talk of a robbery.
The apartment was barely disturbed, he said, adding that he felt Cecil was shot from the north side of the bed that Diane slept in, just as Haggland said in his autopsy report, though Diane said the intruder shot Cecil from the opposite south side.
Following an early adjournment but no verdict, the jury asked for a continuance so they could hear from more witnesses and read pathology reports. One of the jury members, assistant postmaster Joe Simpson, also seemed to have questions, because included in the coroner’s report file was a page on his USPS letterhead. It was hand-dated October 28 and notably featured the word “pajamas” among some brief notes. He had stood and asked Diane directly if she was shielding anyone, or knew who the assailants were. She shook her head in reply.
This article was excerpted from The Alaskan Blonde with permission of the author.
About the author:
Originally from London, James T. Bartlett has been living in Los Angeles since 2004. As a travel and lifestyle journalist and historian, he has written for the Los Angeles Times, BBC, Los Angeles Magazine, Atlas Obscura, and The Guardian, among others. In 2012 he published Gourmet Ghosts – Los Angeles, an alternative guide to the history and ghost stories behind some of the city’s oldest bars, restaurants and hotels. The Alaskan Blonde, published last year, has been nominated for an Anthony Award and is now available as an audiobook.