Access to this collection is generously supported by Arcadia funds. Photograph of James Fagan Culver, 23-year-old transient from Kentucky and suspect in the murder of Mrs. Ethel Whittaker. Mrs. Whittaker was shot in a Wilshire district hotel room in what police believed to be a fake hold-up scenario. Samuel T. Whittaker, husband of the murdered woman, was also held as a suspect.According to Culver, Samuel Whittaker cultivated a friendship with Culver and gave him money for food and shelter over several weeks' time. Then, Whittaker asked Culver to purchase a gun and gave him the money to do so. He was then instructed to go to a specific place at an appointed time and stage a robbery. According to Culver, when he entered the Whittaker's South Alvarado St. apartment, both Samuel and Ethel Whittaker were present. Culver claims to have shot his gun by accident only after being shot himself, presumably by Whittaker. Ethel Whittaker was shot four times, including once from the back. When police retrieved the gun used by Culver, only three chambers were empty.The jury eventually ruled that Whittaker had arranged the elaborate plot to kill his wife in order to collect the insurance on her life. Samuel Whittaker was convicted of the murder of his wife, as well as deadly assault on James Culver, and sentenced to life imprisonment. Whittaker died of a heart attack five days after arriving at the San Quentin penitentiary.Culver himself pled guilty to second-degree murder for his part in the plot against Ethel Whittaker, and received a sentence of five years to life imprisonment. Text from original nitrate sleeve: Libaire, Dorothy[Note: this photo may have been misfiled under 12970. Negative bears inscription 12950].
Type
image
Format
b&w nitrate negative
Identifier
ark:/21198/zz0025fszk
Language
No linguistic content
Subject
People Crimes--California--Los Angeles Portrait photographs Culver, James Fagan, b. 1912 or 1913
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