Title supplied by cataloger. On June 27, 1937, Jeanette Stephens, 8, and her friends, Melba Everett, 9, and Madeline Everett, 7, were lured from Centinela Park in Inglewood. An extensive search ensued, with the police enlisting the aid of 500 Boy Scouts. Two days after their disappearance, a Boy Scout found the three bodies in a ravine in Baldwin Hills; the shoes of each girl were removed and placed in a pile near their bodies (identified on the map). From the moment news of the case broke, Albert Dyer, Inglewood resident and traffic guard at Centinela Elementary School where the girls were students, followed the story closely. He began keeping a scrapbook of newspaper clippings and offered the police theories about the case. As soon as the bodies were found, Dyer arrived on the scene in Baldwin Hills and began demonstrating strange behavior. Authories began to suspect Dyer and took him into custody. He was questioned at a jail in Los Angeles, as threats upon his life were being made in Inglewood. Dyer explained how he abducted the girls from the park and enticed them with the prospect of rabbit hunting in Baldwin Hills. Dyer confessed, "I had no other reason than sex" and he went on to describe how he strangled each girl. Despite that he later recanted his confession, Dyer was tried and convicted on August 26, 1937. On September 16, 1938, he was hanged at San Quentin. Caption dated July 1, 1937 reads, "This map of the Baldwin Hills scene where three babes of Inglewood were found slain is being studied today by officers seeking the mad slayer. Officers believe the fiend took the girls down the ravine for a mile from La Brea, then placed them several yards apart on promises of bringing wild rabbits to them. With the girls separated by the winding gulley, he killed them one by one, some officers believe. Officers also seek two men seen Saturday near the test oil well."
Type
image
Format
1 drawing :b&w ;34 x 27 cm. on board 36 x 31 cm. Drawings
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