Title supplied by cataloger.; Photograph was edited for publication purposes. On December 31, 1936, Helen Wills Love stormed into the Del Mar Club in Santa Monica and shot her self-proclaimed husband, Harry A. Love, whom she felt was choosing his mother over her. Wills maintained that she was Love's "secret" wife because he had refused to share the news of his marriage with his mother, Cora K. Love, due to what Wills described as his "mother complex." Prior to her conviction in 1937, when she was sent to the California Institution for Women, also known as Tehachapi Prison, Wills fell into a coma, which was believed to have been induced by Will's overall anxiety and/or fear of prison or death by hanging. She applied for parole a couple of times, once in 1937 and again in 1938, but was denied. In 1938, she was told she would be eligible to apply again in two years; it is unknown when she was actually paroled. Wills, if counting her "marriage" to Love, had four spouses throughout her life. She died at 95 years of age on November 1, 2000. First photograph caption dated March 10, 1937 reads, "'Two people in this world loved harry Love with a burning affection,' Helen Love mused. 'I was one of those two. Harry's mother, Mrs. Cora Love, was the other. His mother is the one who is paying the supreme penalty. She has him no more--but for me it is easier. Neither bullets, nor death, nor courts, nor even prison bars can prevent me from having Harry with me always, in my heart.'"; Second photograph caption dated April 2, 1937 reads, "Report of two psychiatrists that 'she may not have been legally sane at the moment of the killing,' was expected to be used today in an effort to get a new trials for Helen Wills Love. Still recuperating from her strange coma, she was to be brought to court today for a sanity hearing. She is under conviction of slaying Harry A. Love."
Type
Image
Format
1 photographic print :b&w ;23 x 21 cm. Photographic prints
Wills, Helen Wills, Helen--Trials, litigation, etc California.--Superior Court (Los Angeles County) Courtrooms--California--Los Angeles Trials (Murder)--California--Los Angeles Murderers--California--Los Angeles Women murderers--California--Los Angeles Women--California--Los Angeles Downtown Los Angeles (Los Angeles, Calif.) Los Angeles Evening Herald and Express photographs Herald-Examiner Collection photographs Portrait photographs
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