By Daily Mail (U.S.) | Created at 2024-12-16 00:09:40 | Updated at 2024-12-16 02:34:30
2 hours ago
Barbara Graham was blessed with 1950s movie star beauty - but she was no angel.
A prostitute and small-time criminal, she willingly joined her lover and his underworld cronies in a botched burglary that ended in the brutal killing of 64-year-old widow and former vaudevillian Mabel Monahan in Burbank, California.
But a new examination of the case 70 years on, by the lead prosecutor in OJ Simpson's murder proceedings, has revealed that the woman dubbed 'Bloody Babs' would almost certainly have met a different end had it not been for a 'travesty' of a trial and a 'profound breach of ethics.'
In fact, Marcia Clark admits that she was so overcome with rage at the treatment Graham received, she had to take a break from the case for a while to calm down.
Graham was convicted of murder based on the flimsy account of an accomplice, and sent to the gas chamber - the third woman in California to meet that gruesome fate.
Three years later, an Oscar-winning film was released based on the case, called I Want To Live!, starring Susan Hayward.
But, while critically acclaimed, that version of events took the opposite approach, painting Graham as 'a devoted mother who’d been falsely accused and framed by unscrupulous cops,’ says Clark.
So what was the truth? What exactly had Barbara Graham done and what evidence had been presented to prove her guilt?
Clark said she'd seen serial killers and mass murderers get more humane treatment than Barbara Graham
Susan Hayward won a Best Actress Oscar for her role in I Want To Live!
Clark says she barely recognized herself in the person reporters described during the OJ Simpson trial
Most of all, Clark wanted to understand ‘why the prosecution had taken the rare step - even back then - of seeking the death penalty for a woman could only be discovered by finding out what went on in that trial.’
The result of her painstaking legal detective work is the new book Trial by Ambush: Murder, Injustice, and the Truth about the Case of Barbara Graham.
Clark spent months hunting down the original reporter’s transcript of the trial - more than 4,000 pages ‘that recorded the actual testimony of witnesses, the rulings by the judge, and the arguments of counsel’ - which had been buried in archives for nearly 70 years.
She then spent another two years immersed in the investigation, the trial, and Graham's tragic life, poring over court documents, books, magazine articles, and newspapers in search of the real Barbara.
Her verdict? ‘I’ve seen serial killers and mass murderers get more humane treatment than… Barbara Graham.'
The bare facts of the case are not in dispute.
Barbara Graham knocked on Mabel Monahan’s door around 8.30pm on the night of March 8, 1953, claiming she had car trouble and asking for help.
Monahan was known to own thousands of dollars worth of fine jewelry - diamond rings, earrings and brooches, and platinum bracelets - and this was not the first time she’d been targeted for a robbery.
Normally cautious, she nonetheless opened the door. Her battered body was found two days later, hands tied behind her back.
Clark admits that she was so overcome with rage at the treatment Graham received, she had to take a break from the case for a while to calm down
'The descriptions of her were snide, relentlessly critical, and obsessed with her looks,' says Clark
'Every story seemed to start and end with some comment about her hair, her makeup, her clothes, and most of all, her cavalier attitude'
Mabel Monahan was known to own thousands of dollars worth of fine jewelry, and this was not the first time she’d been targeted for a robbery
‘There was blood on her head, a pillowcase underneath it, a bloodstained cloth wrapped around her neck, and a cloth strip with a knot in the center lying on the floor near her head,’ writes Clark
The house had been ransacked - ‘ripped apart from top to bottom’. Incredibly, however, the thieves hadn’t found Mabel’s hoard of cash and jewelry, or the safe they believed she kept her riches in.
An informant soon gave police the name of safe cracker Baxter Shorter, who identified career criminal Emmett Perkins - Graham’s lover - ex-con Jack Santo - who was already a suspect in another quadruple murder - John True and Graham as the gang behind the break-in.
Shorter claimed he’d acted as the look-out guy, but was called into the house to help search for Monahan's treasure.
He described the scene that met him in an early statement to the police: ‘She is beaten horribly. There is blood all over the rug and everything. As I enter the door, the woman is moaning.
‘The woman with us [Graham] bends down to John. He is holding the old lady’s head down on the rug, on the carpeting. The woman says, “Go on and knock her out.” So Emmett takes a nickel-plated gun out and starts slugging her in the temple.’
His testimony was enough to give police their suspects.
But right from the start, says Clark, ‘the coverage of Barbara was not only excessively focused on her appearance; it was overtly sexualized, voyeuristic, and deliberately titillating.
She was discovered 'stark naked' one sensational report claimed. Others said she was 'only partly clothed' or 'changing clothes'.
And it wasn't just because she was a woman - 'though that was a factor since women were almost never involved in such a violent crime.
‘It was also because she was strikingly beautiful. Petite - just five foot three - and a slender 121 pounds, the 29-year-old Barbara had the looks of an actress, a stark contrast to her purported partners in crime, the 44-year-old weasel-faced Perkins and the 48-year-old brutish-looking Santo.’
However, before cops could make their charges stick, Shorter was kidnapped at gunpoint and never seen again - leaving them desperate for a new star witness before their case collapsed.
They turned their attention to John True who, in return for immunity, agreed to take the stand. But in his account, he painted Graham, not Perkins, as the ice-cold killer.
Under oath, he told the court that he'd walked into the house to see Graham ‘holding Mabel Monahan by the neck and slamming her in the head with the butt of a pistol “bringing down a gun butt time and time again” with a ferocity so savage that he put his hand on Mabel’s face to block the blows.
‘He testified that Barbara then put a pillowcase over her head and Perkins tied her hands behind her back and dragged her down the hall. Santo tied a strip of cloth around her neck - the coup de grâce.
‘The pathologist said Mabel Monahan had died of asphyxiation, strangled by that strip of cloth.’
The two differing accounts didn't matter to the cops or the DA - they needed a conviction and Graham would be it.
‘At base,’ writes Clark, ‘the jury had only the word of an accomplice - John True - to prove what each of the defendants did inside that house.
Graham (far right) with her co-defendants Santo (left) and Perkins (center)
The movie based on Graham's case painted her as a devoted mother who’d been falsely accused (pictured: Tommy Graham, her son)
Graham was convicted of murder based on the flimsy account of an accomplice, and sent to the gas chamber - the third woman in California to meet that gruesome fate
‘There was no physical evidence to back it up. That made it all the more critical that every single piece of evidence bearing on his credibility be revealed. Instead, the prosecution willfully hid the evidence that would’ve exposed the myriad problems with his credibility - even going so far as to lie to the jury that Baxter Shorter’s statement would back up True’s testimony.
‘This profound breach of ethics unquestionably impacted the jury’s view of this key witness.'
Surprisingly, Clark admits to identifying more closely with Graham than she might have been comfortable with.
‘Every story seemed to start and end with some comment about her hair, her makeup, her clothes, and most of all, her cavalier attitude. They’d reduced her to a stereotype, the femme fatale of noir novels, beautiful but with a block of ice for a heart.
‘I admit that issue had some personal resonance for me. During the OJ Simpson trial, I barely recognized myself in the person reporters described... It was a helpless feeling to read the exaggerated accounts and flat out misrepresentations of me.'
Clark came under intense scrutiny for her appearance during the 1995 murder trial - with her haircut proving particularly controversial.
‘But when I checked out some of the news stories about Barbara, I saw how much worse it could get. The descriptions of her were snide, relentlessly critical, and obsessed with her looks.'
Even in his closing arguments, lead prosecutor J Miller Leavy claimed Graham had only taken the stand to 'flaunt' herself to male jurors.
The caricature of ‘Bloody Babs’, the ice-cold killer, proved irresistible - to the jury, the press, and the public.
Graham - along with Perkins and Santo - was sentenced to death. But even as she faced the end, the focus was on her physical appearance.
‘The Los Angeles Times reporter adopted a heedlessly callous tone, writing, “The brashly attractive 32-year-old convicted murderess, her bleached blond hair turned to its natural brown... walked to her death as if dressed for a shopping trip.”
‘Following up on that theme, the San Francisco Examiner described her as though she were attending a fashion show: “She wore a beige wool suit with covered buttons, pumps, gold pendant earrings and wedding band.”
One reporter said she was 'the most beautiful victim the gas chamber has ever claimed.'
The process of researching and writing about Graham’s case was, says Clark, ‘at times harrowing, the emotional toll exhausting.
‘When at last, I came to the end, I closed my laptop and stared out the window, overcome by the outrage, frustration, and utter sadness that washed over me.
‘As both a prosecutor and defense attorney, the one principle I’d held most dear was the right to a fair trial. There can be no justice without it. And a fair trial means the jury gets to know the unaltered truth, not the abridged version created by a prosecutor’s kaleidoscope twist that eliminates any evidence inconsistent with guilt.’
Only a few hours of life remaining, Barbra Graham enters San Quentin Prison to be executed
Clark with her prosecution colleagues at the OJ Simpson trial. She says: 'As both a prosecutor and defense attorney, the one principle I’d held most dear was the right to a fair trial'
After examining all the evidence, she is convinced that Graham’s role was purely as decoy. ‘But,’ she says, ‘my opinion takes into account a lot of evidence the jury never got to hear.’
She adds that two key witnesses had been bought and paid for, and were therefore unreliable.
Graham's biggest crime? To go against a 'gendered ’50s attitude that particularly deplored and punished a woman who refused to conform to societal norms.'
Had the jury been presented with the full picture, they may not have acquitted Graham, admits Clark.
‘But I can certainly believe that a few jurors - and it only takes one - might decide they were suspicious of a prosecution that relied so heavily on the testimony of snitches. A suspicion like that translates easily into reasonable doubt.
‘That means the trial would’ve ended in a hung jury.
‘And even if the jury did convict Barbara, I think it’s far more likely that they would have voted for leniency instead of death.’
Barbara maintained her innocence in the murder of Mabel Monahan right up to her death.
In her last conversation with a priest on the day she was due to be executed, she said: ‘I think it’s going to be rather nice to come face to face with the one person in the world who knows I’m innocent.’
The priest reportedly said: ‘None of us is wholly innocent or guilty in the eyes of God.’
To which Graham replied: ‘I meant Mrs Monahan.’
Trial by Ambush: Murder, Injustice, and the Truth about the Case of Barbara Graham by Marcia Clark is published by Thomas & Mercer
