1945 - Maniac Slayer Knifes Blonde Beauty

In 1945 in Santa Fe, New Mexico, on the corner of Grant and Bowers Streets, were the Twitchell Apartments. Built in classic pueblo style, the comfortable apartments were arranged around the street corner in an L shape so that each resident’s back door opened onto a partly walled-in common court. The arrangement made for close neighbors who knew each other by name. On the Grant side, there was Frank Flanagan, a superintendent at the Santa Fe Builders Supply Company, and his wife Betty, Al Thorwaldsen, operator of Fiesta Fashions, and his wife Jean, who worked at Boyles Flower Shop on the Plaza. On the Bowers side, there was Leslie Murphey, librarian at the Palace of the Governors, Leon G. “Bud” Kennedy, a teller at the First National Bank, and his wife Eloise and one celebrity resident, Frank Young, Chief of the New Mexico State Police.

Several miles away, within the walls of the New Mexico State Penitentiary, there resided inmate Louis Young, 44, a “tall, lanky Negro,” who spoke slowly and with a Texas drawl. He was serving a ten-year term for an armed robbery committed in 1943 during which he tied an Albuquerque woman to a chair and threatened her with a hatchet in order to separate her from $110. This was Louis Young’s fourth prison term. The first three were for burglaries in his hometown of Houston, Texas.

In January of 1944, Louis Young began his sentence at the New Mexico penitentiary and just six weeks later, Warden John B. McManus awarded Young with trusty status. He was assigned to work as a janitor at State Police headquarters under the general supervision of State Police Chief Frank Young (no relation).

It was a familiar and frequent practice at the penitentiary for the warden to “farm” out convicts for labor. Under a statute first written in territorial days, state prisoners were required to labor and the warden was given almost unlimited discretion in determining what that labor might be. Early on, prisoners labored mostly on road gangs but by 1945, prisoners worked at “industries” within the walls (at the prison’s own dairy, for example) or outside the walls as assigned by the warden. Over the years, it became customary for the warden to provide prison labor to especially favored government officials.

The practice came under fire in 1944 when the local newspaper, The Santa Fe New Mexican, reported that a crew of convicts was used to help resurface the driveway at Governor Dempsey’s private home in Santa Fe. The editor declared himself shocked to learn, from an Attorney General’s ruling on the point, that this sort of thing was “not unlawful.” The editor was much more comfortable, however, in early 1945, when the City of Santa Fe negotiated with the new warden, Howell Gage, for the use of convict labor in the first post-war street improvement projects. In that instance, the deal was “lawful” since state law specifically authorized the use of prison labor to “work on streets, alleys, roads and bridges in and near Santa Fe.”

[Interestingly, no other city, town or village in New Mexico has this same privilege to call upon the warden for laborers – only Santa Fe. Under the original 1889 law, Santa Fe could use prisoners not only for road work but for “quarrying and hauling stone and also in securing, bettering and protecting the banks of the Santa Fe River. . .”)

By the warden’s long custom, one trusty worked as the warden’s chauffeur, others maintained the grounds at the New Mexico Supreme Court and at the Governor’s Mansion. Many more were assigned as “porters” to important state officials – like the Chief of the New Mexico State Police. Such a trusty was Louis Young, driven by police car to State Police headquarters on Cerrillos Road to work during the day, and then driven back to the Penitentiary in the evening.

Over the months, State Police Chief Frank Young fell into the habit of ordering Louis Young to the Chief’s own Bowers Street apartment for housework. By summer of 1945, Louis Young worked for the Chief and his family at the apartment on Bowers Street three or four times a week. Generously, Chief Young often loaned out his “houseboy” to the neighbors, including the Kennedys and the Flanagans. So, by November 1945, the “tall, lanky Negro”, dressed in plain overalls, was a familiar sight at the quiet Twitchell Apartments.

On November 19, 1945 Louis Young had finished his morning chores at the Chief’s apartment and was assigned to wax the floors at the Flanagan apartment that afternoon. Betty Flanagan would later say that she thought Louis Young had done a good job on the floors. At 5 o’clock, Louis Young called for a ride to the penitentiary where he ate his dinner and went to bed in his cell as usual.

***

Eloise Kennedy was not yet 23, when she and her husband, Bud, moved to Santa Fe from Denver. Bud, a member of a prominent Denver banking family, married young Eloise Cannon just before entering the Army in 1942. After discharge from the service in 1944, Bud and Eloise took up residence on Bowers Street, while Bud worked for the First National Bank as a teller. In mid-September 1945, Eloise gave birth to a baby girl, Lynne Gray, and cared for the child at home. The birth had been difficult and, five weeks later, Eloise was still frail.

That afternoon, about 2 p.m., she called Bud at the office to tell him she had spoken with Dr. R.B. Coombs about the baby and that she, herself, would visit the family dentist, Dr. Renfro, that afternoon about a toothache. Around 2:30 p.m., Betty Flanagan knocked at the Kennedy door but no one answered. She opened the unlocked door and walked inside, softly calling for Eloise. Hearing nothing, Mrs. Flanagan left to town on errands. At about 4:30 p.m., another neighbor, Mrs. Clifford Hall, knocked at the door but received no response to her calls. At 5:30 p.m., Bud Kennedy came home and discovered his child resting quietly in her crib and his wife sprawled on the bathroom floor in a pool of blood.

He immediately called for help, then applied cold compresses to his wife’s face in hope of reviving her. He assumed that Eloise, still weak from the birth of their child, had hemorrhaged. He did not notice that her blouse was ripped and her blue jeans were torn.

City police officers arrived along with Dr. Coombs who had also been called by Bud Kennedy. Dr. Coombs briefly examined the body and determined that Eloise Kennedy, 23 years old, had been dead for more than three hours. While the neighbors comforted Bud Kennedy, a police unit transported the infant to St. Vincent hospital for care. For some reason unexplained in the newspaper accounts of these events, there was no ambulance or funeral car called. Instead, police officers placed Eloise Kennedy’s body in the back seat of a patrol car and, in this way, transported the body to Memorial Chapel, the funeral home operated by Preston McGee.

At Memorial Chapel, Dr. Coombs undertook a closer examination of the body of Eloise Kennedy and made a ghastly discovery. Eloise Kennedy had not died of a hemorrhage. She had been stabbed eleven times in the neck, chest and shoulder, at least one thrust severing her jugular vein. The body showed bruising and an injury to the vagina, a small cut with some bleeding. Her blue jeans were torn from the waist to the right knee.

The police were called and, after conferring with Dr. Coombs, a team of officers returned to Bowers Street to search the area and question the neighbors. A search produced no weapon and questioning of the immediate neighbors produced no significant leads. The police, as the newspaper was later to say, were completely baffled.

***

The following morning, the local newspaper headlines shouted that the police were hunting a “maniac slayer” and carried the story of the murder of “blonde beauty” Eloise Kennedy with grisly details. Santa Fe police chief Manuel Montoya gratefully accepted an offer of help in the investigation from the Kennedy’s neighbor, State Police Chief Frank Young and his top deputy, A.B. Martinez. Physical evidence was gathered from the scene – bloody clothing, some black hairs found in Eloise Kennedy’s hands, nail scrapings, blood samples – for shipment to an FBI lab. All activity at the Bowers Street apartments on the afternoon of November 19, 1945 was tracked. A delivery boy from Capitol Pharmacy saw nothing when he came by. A neighbor, Albino Rivera, saw a man park his car on the street in front of the Kennedy car and emerge with a briefcase. Two men from Broome’s Furniture Store delivering tables and chairs to the Thorwaldsen apartment around 3 or 3:30 p.m. met a man coming out of the back yard. He had a full beard and wavy black hair, they told police, adding that the man was “rather foreign-looking, maybe an Italian.” The leads went nowhere.

At 3:00 p.m. on the afternoon of November 20, 1945, a formal inquest at Memorial Chapel was called on the death of Eloise Kennedy. After testimony from a tearful Bud Kennedy, the police and the neighbor, Betty Flanagan, Louis Young appeared as a witness. In a soft voice, he testified that he spent the entire afternoon at the Flanagan apartment waxing the floors. Although he knew the neighbors well, including Eloise Kennedy whom he referred to as ”Miss Eloise,” he knew nothing useful. The inquest closed with a determination of homicide “by an unknown person or persons.”

The following day, police investigation continued. Panicky citizens called in numerous tips of shady characters, rowdy hoodlums and peeping Toms, keeping the police busy. Then came a significant break in the case. While playing in the arroyo north of the Bowers Street Apartments, a 13-year old neighbor boy named John Steel, found a butcher knife with a bent and bloody blade in a pile of leaves. At some point, the record does not reveal exactly when, State Police Chief Frank Young saw the murder knife and recognized it as one of a set kept in his own kitchen. The last time he had seen it, a week earlier, Louis Young was using it to quarter a hog on the kitchen table.

About 10:30 p.m., State Police Captain A.B. Martinez, Assistant District Attorney Albert Clancy, the DA’s investigator Eddie Mack and Santa Fe Police Chief Montoya arrived at the State Penitentiary with a request to interview Louis Young. Louis Young was awakened and taken from his cell to an “inner” room at the prison by guard W. L. McDonald (and, incidentally, the warden’s father-in-law). There, (according to police accounts) Louis Young was advised of his rights and questioned by Bert Clancy for forty minutes about the Eloise Kennedy killing. Louis Young steadfastly denied any knowledge of the crime.

In a dramatic display, the Chief’s set of butcher knives – minus one – was laid on a table before Louis Young and he was asked if he had ever seen them. He denied it. Then Chief Frank Young himself entered the room for the first time and placed the bloody knife on the table. Louis Young looked at the knife, hesitated, then said “I did it, I will tell you all about it.”

Over the next hour, Louis Young answered detailed questions about the murder of Eloise Kennedy while Captain A.B. Martinez typed. Sometime after midnight, the completed statement was read to the illiterate Louis Young who signed it.

Not yet aware of the early morning confession, the local newspaper reported only that evidence in the Kennedy murder had been sent to the FBI but that the police were stalled in their hunt for the killer. The editor of the New Mexican spoke for the community:

The shocking murder of one of Santa Fe’s most charming young women has brought a justified public demand that everything humanly possible be done to bring her slayer speedily to justice.

The case is initially one of the most baffling in New Mexico history. There are few tangible clues. Patience and perseverance are indicated for both public and officials, but every possible effort must be exerted.

For one important thing, the multiplicity of state, district, county and city agencies now working on the case should continue to operate in complete harmony and co-operation.

There should be no hesitancy in sharing information which might lead to the revelation of new clues and speedy capture of the criminal. It makes no difference who breaks the case; the important thing is that it be broken.

Meanwhile, the heartfelt sympathy of every Santa Fean goes out to the family and friends of Mrs. Kennedy.

Later that day, the New Mexican learned of Louis Young’s confession and published an extra edition with banner headlines: “Killer Confesses” and “Negro Convict Admits Knifing Blonde Beauty.” The accompanying story contained only a few details of the confession itself since Assistant District Attorney vowed to keep it secret until the trial. Secret confession or not, enough lurid detail emerged from various sources to fill several columns in the local paper. This is essentially what the well read Santa Fean knew three days after the crime:

Sometime after 1 p.m. on November 19, Louis Young, carrying the knife from Chief Young’s kitchen in his overalls, went to the apartment of Eloise Kennedy. There, the convict propositioned the young mother for sex. When she refused him and indicated she would tell on him, Young furiously stabbed her to death. An apparent attempt at rape was abandoned when someone, likely Mrs. Flanagan, entered the houseand called for Eloise. Young fled at the first opportunity and went to the Flanagan apartment, as he was assigned, to wax the floors. Initially, Louis Young had never been considered a suspect in the murder. In fact, he was called as a friendly witness at the inquest, impressing observers as quiet and polite.

The next day, Thanksgiving Day, the newspaper exposed another bombshell. For the first time Santa Feans learned that the very knife used to kill Eloise Kennedy came from Chief Frank Young’s own kitchen. The Chief had no comment for the newspaper. He was already at his desk, composing a letter of resignation he would tender to Governor Dempsey by the end of the week.

***

The shocking murder and the revelation that it was likely committed by a Negro convict running loose in the streets was stunning to Santa Fe. But, the more resilient of Santa Fe citizens soon overcame their shock and began looking for someone to blame, other than a killer Negro convict. And there were more than the usual suspects available for blame.

For months, the community had grumbled that police protection in Santa Fe was inadequate, a state of affairs both Mayor Manuel Lujan and the Police Chief could not deny. Chief Montoya woefully admitted that, at any given time of the day, only four police officers were available to patrol the entire city (22,000 residents within 36 square miles). In the months before the murder, Santa Fe citizens had regularly complained about youthful hoodlums, unrestrained speeders and downtown drunks, always questioning the absence of police on patrol.

For a City already fearful of criminals at loose, the effect of the murder of Eloise Kennedy was galvanic. Just days after the killing, over 800 citizens gathered at Seth Hall with the purpose of drafting a proposal to improve police protection within the City. Most speakers referred to the Eloise Kennedy murder as they went on to offer solutions to the police problem. Alice Howland, operator of the local Youth Center, urged attention to juvenile delinquents. (Interestingly, a few months later, 900 members of the 1125-member Youth Center walked out, citing the danger from gangs.] Cy Hess argued for better street lighting (“Get us out of the Dark Ages” was a constant refrain in his letters to the editor.) Chamber of Commerce President Norman Shenk declared he would write a letter to J. Edgar Hoover to get help from the FBI. Interestingly, Hoover replied and assigned an Albuquerque agent to offer training to the City’s police officers. More than a few citizens suggested armed vigilante patrols. Over the next several weeks, the citizens met three more times with the final meeting (as the New Mexican ruefully noted) drawing only 45 participants.

The group’s Committee of Ten presented a seven point program to the City, which called for more patrolmen (from 18 to 30), better trained officers, higher salaries, three more squad cars, radios, guns, even a strait jacket – about $45,000 of improvements in all. Prominent citizens, to show their zeal, pledged personal funds for the effort. Eventually, over the next two years, the City began a measured process of increasing business and liquor licensing fees to raise the revenue to pay for more officers and equipment.

At every community meeting – whether at Seth Hall or the City Council – the subject of the Eloise Kennedy murder was raised. Citizen Margaret Gronert wrote a letter to the editor expressing the view of many:

If out of the awful calamity that has befallen Santa Fe, a strong organization of decent citizens is formed, then a young woman will not have been martyred in vain. New Mexico history is replete with the names of martyrs. It seems a pity that in this day and age another martyr is sacrificed to bring about a needed reform. Let us ignore party politics and band together the good people from all parties as a new non-political organization that transcends cheap politics and assumes a guardianships of New Mexico for decent New Mexicans.

Not all citizens were so high-minded. One writer to the New Mexican , Mrs. C.M. Jaramillo, revealed what many had “been itching to say for years, or have been saying it just among ourselves” – that most of the crime in the City of Santa Fe was the work of Negroes and, of course, speeders. Mrs. Louise Sebastian, self-described crusader, suggested that meat and milk should be inspected more closely, without fully explaining how police protection might be thereby improved.

The editor of the New Mexican blamed Governor Dempsey who had been warned by the newspaper that the use of convicts on private projects was immoral, even if no laws were broken.

In the case of Louis Young, it is fair to note that convicts are confined primarily to prevent their continued depredations on law-abiding society. If they are permitted to roam at large, unsupervised, they must just as well not be ordered confined in the first place.

While the Governor was quick to accept Chief Young’s resignation and declare that he was “horrified” by the Kennedy murder, his actions, according to the editor, were too little, too late.

To make matters worse, the Attorney General ruled that the warden had no legal obligation to open prison records to public scrutiny. This turn of events infuriated the local newspaper, which issued at least four editorials that condemned, among other things, the protection of inmate records at the expense of the public safety.

Meanwhile Governor Dempsey, apparently unaware of the irony, joined the citizens of Santa Fe in calling for an investigation of the use of convict labor for private projects. John F. Simms, chairman of the Board of the State Penitentiary (and, later, Governor of New Mexico from 1955 through 1957) advanced specific reforms, including the rewriting of the laws pertaining to prison labor.

Simms disclosed that Warden Gage had been reprimanded in one case where he loaned a prisoner to his father-in-law (the same W.L. McDonald who was employed as a guard at the Penitentiary) for use on the family sheep ranch near Santa Fe. But the reprimand was not for the use of convict labor on a private project – the Attorney General had already determined that was “not unlawful.” Nor was the warden reprimanded for transporting the prisoner in a state car driven by the warden’s chauffeur, another trusty. The reprimand was for the warden’s failure to provide a guard for the two prisoners as they made their trip to the sheep ranch.

Just weeks after the Kennedy murder and while the prison scandal was unfolding in the press, another prisoner, Lester King – serving 25 years for armed robbery – escaped. He left in a penitentiary truck after delivering materials to the prison-owned clay pit in Lamy. (One of the prison’s most profitable industries in 1945 was the making of fired brick for construction purposes, mostly in Santa Fe homes.) King was captured after more than three days on the run. Santa Feans howled for the Warden’s head but Gage (a powerful politician who would go on to be a delegate to the 1948 Democratic National Convention) weathered the storm.

Meanwhile, the interest of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People had been aroused by the Louis Young case and representatives visited the convict in his prison cell. Ultimately, the group did not enter the case although a NAACP lawyer, William T. O’Sullivan, recommended that a psychiatrist examine Young.

***

Louis Young appeared, in chains and without an attorney, for arraignment on the murder charge on December 20, 1945 before District Judge William J. Barker. When Judge Barker offered to appoint him counsel, Young said, “Whatever you all do, I ain’t got no say-so.” Barker appointed prominent Santa Fe attorneys Fletcher Catron and Frank Andrews. Catron promised a good defense although he admitted all he knew of the case came from the newspapers. At an unannounced hearing before Judge Barker on January 5, 1946, Louis Young, accompanied by his new lawyers, entered his plea of “not guilty.” Young’s lawyer, Fletcher Catron, also waived preliminary hearing. District Attorney David Carmody announced that he would ask the jury to impose the death penalty.

Catron and Frank Andrews promptly filed a motion to move the trial to McKinley County, on the basis that the local press had inflamed the citizens of Santa Fe and no fair jury could be found in the City. The District Attorney quickly conceded the motion. Judge Barker moved Louis Young, in shackles and leg chains, from the Penitentiary to the McKinley County Jail in Gallup in preparation for trial there on February 19, 1946.

Jury selection in Gallup was brisk. Forty potential jurors were called. The State struck two for good cause, the Defense, one. Seven more were excused by peremptory challenges, challenges for which no cause need be stated. Judge Barker seated twelve regular jurors and one alternate. On the opening day of trial, those jurors heard an opening statement from DA David Carmody who told the jury to expect hard evidence of cold-blooded murder, including the killer’s own words. Neither Fletcher Catron nor Frank Andrews offered an opening statement for the Defendant. Louis Young sat quietly, chain-smoking, and observed the proceedings.

Leon G. Kennedy, Jr., the grieving husband, was called as the state’s first witness. He related the events of November 19, 1945 with undisguised emotion. The husband was respectfully and only briefly cross-examined. Deputy Chief A.B. Martinez recited the chain of custody as the basis to introduce the physical evidence, including items sent to the FBI for examination. Then came the scientists, bearing laboratory results to prove that human blood was found on both the murder weapon and on Louis Young’s pants and under shorts. Young’s lawyers responded by repeatedly pointing out that the body had been removed from the apartment to the funeral home in the back seat of a police car, thus irreparably contaminating the so-called “scientific” evidence. One result of the lab tests was surprising: the wiry black hairs found in Eloise Kennedy’s hands at death was not Louis Young’s. They belonged to the Kennedy family terrier.

Former Chief Frank Young testified, then Dr. Coombs who testified, to visible reaction from the jury, that a recent injury to Eloise Kennedy’s vagina could have resulted from an attempted rape. Others told their parts in the tale: Preston McGee, the funeral director; Frank Flanagan, the neighbor; even little Johnny Steel, the 13-year old who found the murder weapon.

On the next day of trial, over the objections of defense counsel, Louis Young’s confession was read to the jury. In his confession, Young admitted that he went to the Kennedy apartment after the Flanagans had left him waxing the floor. There, Young and Eloise Kennedy were talking:

Q: What were you talking about?

A: About Work

Q: What did you then do?

A: She went into the bathroom.

Q: Then what did, if anything, happen?

A: I asked her for a date

Q: What do you mean by a date?

A: Going to bed.

Q: What did she say?

A: She said she was going to tell on me.

Q: What did you then do?

A: I got scared and stabbed her.

Young had carried the knife from Chief Young’s kitchen with him when he went to the Kennedy apartment. While he denied any intention of rape, he admitted that he tore Eloise Kennedy’s clothes but then he heard someone enter the apartment and he fled. He returned to the Flanagan apartment and finished waxing the floors, then called a police unit to take him back to the penitentiary. As to his motive:

Q: Louis, tell me why did you do this?

A: I don’t know – just what come up in my mind. I do not . . .

Q: But when you went over there, you had definite intentions, did you not?

A: Yes, sir. I figured I would get some, that she would let me, but I did not figure on hurting her.

Young’s lawyers vigorously objected to the admission of Louis Young’s confession because, they claimed, the confession was given involuntarily, out of fear of police violence and out of love for Chief Frank Young and his family. Young’s lawyers further argued that Louis Young was also physically exhausted, having been awakened late at night and grilled through the early morning. Finally, the lawyers concluded, Louis Young was illiterate and could not know what he was signing. Nevertheless, Judge Barker admitted the confession into evidence.

Louis Young took the witness stand once at his own trial, during the motion to suppress the confession, but that testimony was heard without the jury present. The jury never actually heard Louis Young speak.

On the last day of trial, the jurors received closing arguments in the morning and withdrew to consider their verdict, emerging after just two hours of deliberation with a verdict that Louis Young was guilty of first-degree, malicious and deliberate murder. Minutes later, Louis Young stood before Judge William Barker to receive his sentence: death by electrocution on April 23, 1946. He made this brief statement:

I am here to suffer a penalty. I am not guilty. You will find in the Bible that all vengeance belongs to God.

As he was led out of the courtroom, Louis Young burst into a Negro spiritual.

The editor of the Santa Fe New Mexican had this to say:

Not Vengeance

It is not vengeance which society seeks in the case of Louis Young, although there are few people who can avoid feeling a desire for revenge against the killer of Santa Fe’s charming young matron, Mrs. Eloise Kennedy.

In decreeing the death penalty for Louis Young, society asks not vengeance, but protection. A horrible crime has been committed. A swift, sure sentence of death will put the perpetrator where he can murder no more, and will deter anyone else who might be tempted to a similar crime.

Although the case probably will be appealed, no one familiar with it now doubts that justice was done.

Young was given a fair trial, before an impartial jury. He repudiated his earlier confession, but failed to convince the court that it had been obtained under duress. The case boiled down to his unsupported denial, in the face of much direct and circumstantial evidence that he was the killer.

His defense attorneys, both of them able and respected in their profession, made as good a case as they could have, under the circumstances. They just didn’t have much to work with.

It is no defense for Louis Young, to point out that the crime never would have occurred if those responsible for his safe-keeping acted otherwise than they did.

Those people were not on trial, and they cannot be brought to trial, because what they did – or did not do – was not against the law.

Society has been fair to Louis Young. But it seeks protection against such crimes as he has been convicted of committing.

It can gain a measure of protection by invoking quick justice against an individual killer. It can gain a greater and more lasting protection by revising the state’s prison code to provide assurance that known potential murderers cannot roam unguarded.

There is no conflict between such a law and one providing for the utmost efforts to rehabilitate convicts. Modern prison law does both. New Mexico’s law is antiquated and inadequate.

With financial support from “a group of Negroes from Albuquerque” interested in Young’s case, Fletcher Catron filed an appeal with the New Mexico Supreme Court. Gilbert Espinosa, an Albuquerque lawyer, was hired to carry Louis Young’s appeal. The appeal triggered an automatic stay of execution on April 20, 1946, just three days before the original execution date. The slow process of appeal began.

***

On March 19, 1947 – almost a year after Louis Young first filed his appeal – the Supreme Court issued its opinion. See State v. Young, 51 NM 77, 178 P.2d 592 (1947). Chief Justice Brice, writing for Justices Lujan and Sadler and District Judge Luis E. Armijo, sitting by designation. The State’s Attorney General, C.C. McCulloh, Assistant Attorney General Robert W. Ward and Santa Fe’s District Attorney David Carmody argued the case for the State. Fletcher Catron and Frank Andrews appeared along with Gilbert Espinosa for Louis Young.

The appeal raised a number of interesting points, most only of interest to the lawyer, but, the opinion is notable in reciting the facts of the case at some length, including the circumstances of Louis Young’s midnight confession. According to Young, he was never told he could have a lawyer. For hours, he was cajoled, threatened and tricked into a confession. First the interrogators worked on his love of Chief Frank Young and his family; then they waved their arms in a way he thought threatening and then they tricked him by telling him there were two witnesses ready to say they saw him coming out of Eloise Kennedy’s apartment at the time of the murder. By this time, Young was tired, feeling sick and he gave the police the confession they wanted.

If you want me to tell you a story I can tell you one and you all write it down, but some day somebody will read it and find out I did not do it. I say, ‘Of course there is nothing for me to do. I don’t know what you all is going to do with me, but if it will please you all I will say you it.’

When Louis Young was confronted with the bloody knife by his former employer, Chief Frank Young,

I sat there and looked at the knife. I did not know what to say because I knowed I had not used it, but did not know what they was going to do to me if I did not answer the question like they wanted me to, from the way they had been talking to me, and I say ‘I reckon I did,’ and I got these words to face now and press my dying pillow.

On that issue, the Supreme Court ruled that the confession was properly admitted because the circumstances of the Louis Young case weren’t any worse than other cases they’d seen pass constitutional muster in other states.

The most interesting discussion in the opinion concerns whether there was evidence of “malice aforethought,” the legal term at the time to describe the modern requirements for first degree murder: deliberation and premeditation in the intent to kill. The Supreme Court first noted that Louis Young went to Eloise Kennedy’s apartment to ask her “for a date,” by which he meant “going to bed.” She refused him. Young said, “I figured I would get me some, that she would let me, but I did not figure on hurting her.” But that, according to the Supreme Court, was obviously false:

He was a Negro convict and must have realized that it was so improbable the deceased would submit herself to him, that to accomplish his purpose he would almost certainly have to resort to force. He weighed these possibilities and determined that he would rape her (unless, as a remote possibility, she would submit), and then slay her.

The Supreme Court affirmed Louis Young’s conviction for first-degree murder and reinstated the order for his sentence of death by electrocution. No further appeal was filed. The new date set for Louis Young’s execution by the electric chair was Friday, June 13, 1947.

Louis Young, on death row for more than a year, seemed resigned to his fate. He told an AP reporter, “If the good Lord is ready for me to go, I’m going. If he isn’t, I ain’t.” Re-baptized into the Baptist Church while his appeal was pending, Louis Young had found comfort in religion. “The lawyers, everybody, have done all they can for me,” he was quoted in the New Mexican as saying (with a grin), “I’m in fine spirits. No need of worrying now.” Louis Young occupied his final days with praying, reading from his Bible and singing old hymns or Negro spirituals.

On June 13, 1947, Santa Fe New Mexican editor, Will Harrison, visited Louis Young in death row, hours before his scheduled electrocution. “Louis Young looked at death today and grinned,” wrote Harrison, “the 47-year-old man talked with ease to a reporter and a made a joke of what will happen to him at a minute past 12 tonight.” Young still maintained his innocence in the killing of Eloise Kennedy. He seemed reconciled to his fate, saying, “I’ve got to pay anyway so I ain’t letting it worry me.”

Despite some talk of reprieve, the Governor (Tom Mabry in 1947) publicly stated he would take no action in the Louis Young case. In any event, Young’s lawyers had made no request for clemency.

As was customary in the newspaper reporting of these matters, Louis Young’s last meal was described in detail:

Young, of lanky figure and easy posture, intoned Negro spirituals in his cell between feasts of ham and eggs for breakfast, rolled beef roast, baked corn, potatoes buttered peas and cake, for lunch, and on the final meal tonight, fried chicken, giblet gravy, French-fried potatoes, asparagus tips, fresh strawberries, with whipped cream. “I ain’t very hungry,” Young said, grinning, “but I’m eating it all and liking it.”

Just before midnight, Louis Young walked to the electric chair, singing a favorite spiritual, “Use Me Lord, In Thy Service” in a strong baritone voice. The warden interrupted his singing to ask, "Louis Young, you are about to be executed by the State of New Mexico. Do you have anything to say." Young replied, "No, I ain't, Mr. Gage. I've done said all I'm going to say. I'm going innocent. I ask God to take me into his kingdom. God take my soul." A leather mask was then put over Louis Young's head and the executioner sent three 40-second shocks through Young's body. At seven minutes past midnight, on June 13, 1947, Louis Young was declared dead.

Notes: Long-time residents of the City of Santa Fe know this story and many of the people and places mentioned. So I provide the following notes only for the newcomer:

1. In 1945, Bowers Street was a short tangent off the northwest curve of the Federal Oval, a dead end lane less than 100 meters in length, across the Arroyo de Las Mascaras from Rosario Street. Bowers Street no longer exists. It disappeared during the construction of the City’s inner-city loop, called Paseo de Peralta, in 1969.

2. The Twitchell Apartments were converted to offices sometime in the 1960’s. Currently, the main building is occupied by Sotheby’s International Realty with its address as 326 Grant Avenue.

3. Leon G. “Bud” Kennedy, Jr. left Santa Fe almost immediately after the murder of his wife and moved back to Denver. As far as I know, he never visited the City again, except to attend the trial and, later, the execution, of Louis Young. His father, however, was a national banking figure and had at least one occasion to visit Santa Fe. The brief society item that noted his visit also mentioned the tragic murder of Eloise Kennedy.

4. Santa Fe Builder’s Supply Company, the employer of Frank Flanagan, was known then as Sanbusco. Now it is Sanbusco Market Center, a retail shopping emporium. To answer the typical tourist question, the Center is not named for a saint. Sanbusco is a shortened version of the words, Santa Fe Builder’s Supply Company.

5. Warden John B. McManus eventually became Chief Justice of the New Mexico Supreme Court (1971-1979). Nicknamed “Blackjack” McManus, he had a reputation as a gambler and had a regular table at the Palace where he and his cronies played “Stacko,” a game involving stacked coins.

6. Warden Howell Gage held a number of political appointments before becoming warden in 1945. Previously, he had been a State Corporation Commissioner.

7. Drs. Coombs and Renfro maintained offices at the nearby Coronado Building, as did most of Santa Fe’s leading doctors, including Drs. Albert Lathrop and the infamous Nancy Campbell (but that’s another story).

8. Preston McGee’s Memorial Chapel Mortuary was opened in 1942 on Shelby Street. The mortuary moved to Luisa Street in 1956. In 1984, the name was changed to McGee Memorial Chapel.

9. State Police Captain A.B. Martinez, a large and forceful man, figures in many crime stories in Santa Fe, due to his astonishing ability to extract confessions from suspects. Most Santa Feans know him as a long-time member (and once President) of the Santa Fe Fiesta Council.

10. District Attorney David Carmody became a District Judge in Santa Fe, then Supreme Court Justice (1959-1969).

11. Seth Hall, scene of mass meetings in 1945, served as the high school gymnasium for the local high school. It was razed in 1955 for the Sweeney Convention Center which was, in turn, razed in 2007, to make way for yet another, grander convention center.

12. Fletcher Catron, one of Louis Young’s attorneys, was the son of the more famous Thomas B. Catron of Santa Fe Ring fame. Fletcher Catron (and his brothers, John, Charles and Tom) practiced law from their offices in the Catron Block, which consisted of most of the east side of the Plaza. The Catron law firm still exists (with another Fletcher Catron in charge, a nephew of our Fletcher Catron).

13. Frank Andrews also founded a legal dynasty with lawyer Seth Montgomery. The offices of Montgomery & Andrews are located directly across Paseo de Peralta from Sotheby’s International Realty.

14. I have no idea whatever happened to little Johnny Steel.

***

In the City of the Holy Faith

1951 - The Flaming Sword of Saint Germain

On January 5, 1951, the Santa Fe New Mexican front page carried a banner headline: “ ‘I Am’ Leader Sued Here.” The story involved Hepzibah Powell, a 75 year-old woman bedridden at St. Vincent Hospital, who filed a suit against Edna Ballard, leader of the controversial religious sect known as the Mighty I Am. Mrs. Powell, through her lawyer, Donnan Stephenson, claimed that Ballard had promised to take care of all of Powell’s earthly needs and to protect Powell’s interests in the next world. In return, Powell gave Ballard $9,000 in cash and $3,000 in jewels. But Ballard had refused to pay her hospital bills. Powell, in her lawsuit, asked for her $12,000 back plus $50,000 in punitive damages.

For her part, Ballard issued a statement to the United Press that the lawsuit was nothing more than a smear campaign. The $12,000 was simply a donation to her ministry and she had no obligation to return it. Ballard, who identified herself as president of the St. Germain Foundation, sniffed, “If she (Powell) had brought as much love and blessing into the world as I have, she wouldn’t be in this shape.”

The New Mexican story went on to remind readers that the federal government had indicted Ballard which led to a series of sensational trials during the war years. But the story actually began much earlier.

Sometime in 1930, Edna Ballard learned that her husband, Guy Ballard, was the reincarnation of Jesus. And Moses, Frances Bacon, Buddha, George Washington and nearly every illustrious personage of the last four thousand years of human history. In this life, Guy Ballard was a rather less colorful mining engineer from Newton, Kansas who had married, in 1916, a charming concert harpist named Edna Wheeler. Both shared a deep interest in theosophy, a rather elaborate belief that a group of immortals that had transcended the cycle of reincarnation were guiding human destiny from above. This philosophy was a large and generous one, easily accommodating theories concerning the occult, magic potions, astrology and the lost continents of Atlantis and Lemuria.

As Guy Ballard tells it, he was climbing California’s Mount Shasta when he became thirsty. He felt a presence behind him and there, on the mountain top, Ballard encountered Le Comte de Saint Germain. The count was a mysterious occultist and magician who took his name from the French village, Saint Germain, in which he resided. The Count was fabulously wealthy, loved jewels and was reputed to converse with the spirits. And he had died in 1784. To Ballard in 1930, however, Saint Germain appeared to be none the worse for it.

Saint Germain offered Ballard a creamy drink which Ballard found wonderfully exhilarating, then he told Ballard an amazing tale. Saint Germain was a member of an elite group of humans known as the Great White Brotherhood, each of whom had undergone multiple reincarnations so successfully that they had “ascended” to become Masters to guide human history. Saint Germain himself had been tasked with leading the human race through the Aryan age of Aquarius, a Seventh Plane of existence, into the light of the Violet Flame. There might also have been something about Atlantis as well. At any rate, Saint Germain required someone to speak for him on earth and so appointed Guy Ballard, his wife Edna (herself the reincarnation of Joan of Arc and Benjamin Franklin) and his son Donald as “Accredited Messengers” of the Ascended Masters.

Ballard began to spread the teachings of Saint Germain first in Chicago, then in Los Angeles through an organization he called the Mighty I AM. (The name is taken from a verse in Exodus which describes Moses encountering a burning bush calling his name. When Moses inquires who it is, the voice of God responds by saying, “I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I am has sent me to you.’”)

By 1938, Ballard had gathered, some say, more than a million followers who devoured the “decrees” of Saint Germain as revealed to him. These decrees resembled high speed chanting. This constituted the I Am Activity, an amalgamation of Theosophist ideas and various occult notions which proved very popular in California. Eager followers bought books, pamphlets, posters, rings – even a New Age Cold Cream – and otherwise showered the Ballards with “love offerings” in the neighborhood of $3 million (in Depression-era America!), enabling the Accredited Messengers to live a decidedly luxurious lifestyle.

Then, in 1939, Guy Ballard died of heart failure. This was inconvenient as he had often declared his body physically indestructible and preached that he would someday ascend, body and soul, to become a Master himself. His quick-thinking widow, Edna, had the body cremated and told the followers that Ballard had indeed “ascended,” leaving her in charge. As principal Accredited Messenger, Edna Ballard took the name Lotus Ray King

Barely weeks after Guy Ballard’s death, the United States government indicted Edna Ballard and her son, Donald, with mail fraud. Simply put, the Ballards were charged with manufacturing a bogus religion and using it to separate money from the gullible.

The Ballards were convicted in spite of, or perhaps because of Edna’s invocations of the Ascended Masters and the Violet Flame. Donald’s defense fared no better: he claimed that he could make himself invisible at will and that, using his psychic powers, he had sunk several German U-Boats during the war. The conviction was appealed, resulting in a historic Supreme Court decision holding that the truth of a religious belief may not be examined under our Constitution although the sincerity of that belief may be put before a jury. United States v. Ballard, 322 US 78 (1944). Because the trial court allowed inquiry outside the constitutional bounds, the Ballards’ conviction was fatally flawed.

It was a close decision, 5-4, with Justice Robert Jackson’s dissent the most often quoted. Excerpts follow:

I should say the defendants have done just that for which they are indicted. If I might agree to their conviction without creating a precedent, I cheerfully would do so. I can see in their teachings nothing but humbug, untainted by any trace of truth. But that does not dispose of the constitutional question whether misrepresentation of religious experience or belief is prosecutable; it rather emphasizes the danger of such prosecutions....

In the first place, as a matter of either practice or philosophy I do not see how we can separate an issue as to what is believed from considerations as to what is believable. The most convincing proof that one believes his statements is to show that they have been true in his experience. Likewise, that one knowingly falsified is best proved by showing that what he said happened never did happen.

How can the Government prove these persons knew something to be false which it cannot prove to be false? If we try religious sincerity severed from religious verity, we isolate the dispute from the very considerations which in common experience provide its most reliable answer . . .

Some who profess belief in the Bible read literally what others read as allegory or metaphor, as they read Aesop’s fables. Religious symbolism is even used by some with the same mental reservations one has in teaching of Santa Claus or Uncle Sam or Easter bunnies or dispassionate judges. It is hard in matters so mystical to say how literally one is bound to believe the doctrine he teaches and even more difficult to say how far it is reliance upon a teacher’s literal belief which induces followers to give him money....

If the members of the [“I Am”] sect get comfort from the celestial guidance of their “Saint Germain,” however doubtful it seems to me, it is hard to say that they do not get what they pay for. Scores of sects flourish in this country by teaching what to me are queer notions. It is plain that there is wide variety in American religious taste. The Ballards are not alone in catering to it with a pretty dubious product.

The chief wrong which false prophets do to their following is not financial. The collections aggregate a tempting total, but individual payments are not ruinous. I doubt if the vigilance of the law is equal to making money stick by over-credulous people.

But the real harm is on the mental and spiritual plane. There are those who hunger and thirst after higher values which they feel wanting in their humdrum lives. They live in mental confusion or moral anarchy and seek vaguely for truth and beauty and moral support. When they are deluded and then disillusioned, cynicism and confusion follow.

The wrong of these things, as I see it, is not in the money the victims part with half so much as in the mental and spiritual poison they get. But that is precisely the thing the Constitution put beyond the reach of the prosecutor, for the price of freedom of religion or of speech or of the press is that we must put up with, and even pay for, a good deal of rubbish.

Prosecutions of this character easily could degenerate into religious persecution. I do not doubt that religious leaders may be convicted of fraud for making false representations on matters other than faith or experience, as for example if one represents that funds are being used to construct a church when in fact they are being used for personal purposes. But that is not this case, which reaches into wholly dangerous ground.

When does less than full belief in a professed credo become actionable fraud if one is soliciting gifts or legacies? Such inquiries may discomfort orthodox as well as unconventional religious teachers, for even the most regular of them are sometimes accused of taking their orthodoxy with a grain of salt. I would dismiss the indictment and have done with this business of judicially examining other people’s faiths.

On re-trial, the Ballards were again convicted and the matter went up on appeal in 1946. The Supreme Court overturned the conviction again, this time on the sole basis that women had been unconstitutionally excluded from the jury, never reaching the merits. The government took no further court action but, through its administrative agencies, successfully denied the I Am Activity access to the mails and tax exemption on religious grounds for nearly a decade.

It was in the midst of these troubled times, in March of 1942, that Edna Ballard purchased a large house in Santa Fe at 510 Old Taos Highway, moved the Saint Germain Press there and opened an I Am school. By 1951, the members of the I Am sect, usually wearing colorful clothes, were a familiar part of the Santa Fe scene. (The sect members wore different colors for each day of the week; Saturday, for example, was a day for violet or purple colors. The colors red and black, however, were evil and never worn.)

In January of 1951, the I Am School was hosting some 600 students from around the nation who had come to hear Edna Ballard’s “dictations” from Saint Germain and otherwise receive the blessings of the Messenger, Lotus Ray King. Then came the headline in the New Mexican on January 5, 1951, opening old wounds and inflicting fresh ones.

The following day, about 40 I Am students -- almost all women -- crashed through the front door of the New Mexican offices on Marcy Street, demanding to speak to the editors. A few were led to meet with editors Will Harrison and John Mickey McGuire where they delivered an ultimatum to the stunned newspapermen. Mrs. Ballard, they told the editors, demanded the right to review and approve any article regarding the Powell lawsuit before publication or else the newspaper faced a citywide boycott of its advertisers. Other students spread out through the plant, condemning secretaries and printers with strange incantations. The police were called to escort wandering I AM students to the more public areas of the building. Things appeared peaceful if somewhat noisy.

Then, in the midst of debate, a “portly woman in a fur trimmed coat” slapped the paper’s managing editor, John Mickey McGuire, in the face. Another unidentified student slapped editor Will Harrison. Even Calla Hay, the society editor, injured a finger attempting to avoid a roundhouse from an I Am student. Someone broke an antique table in the editor’s conference room. The newspaper was threatened variously with death by a Divine Hand, a $10 million libel suit, bankruptcy, a boycott of advertisers and, worst of all, the “flaming sword of Saint Germain.” Police removed four male I Am students who were threatening employees with fists but the majority of the students simply planted themselves in the building and refused to move.

In less than an hour, the police – armed with a restraining order issued by a District Judge David Chavez – escorted the I Am students out of the building. Though closed for five hours, the newspaper brought out the Saturday edition on time with this headline: “Angry ‘I Am’ Mob Lays Siege to New Mexican on Suit Tale.” The somewhat defiant editor of the New Mexican issued this editorial:

No Thank You, Mrs. Ballard

Mrs. Edna Ballard, president of the I Am activity, has threatened the New Mexico with boycott and rioting, unless she is permitted to read and approve before publication articles relating to a suit filed in district court Friday by an I AM student accusing the I AM president of fraud.

The proposal to call off the boycott, which Mrs. Ballard said had been arranged among merchants of the city, and to keep mobs out of The New Mexican building came after five hours of siege Saturday morning in which throngs who said they were Mrs. Ballard’s followers crowded through the newspaper building, slapping three employees, breaking a piece of furniture and engaging in verbal abuse.

It is a disturbing situation in a little town where we have all been living together in mutual respect and happiness, and we trust it will soon pass.

But more disturbing is the demand to print or not print news under threat of financial ruin. It is the first time, we think, that anything like this has been presented to the New Mexican in its 101 year history of publication.

Of course we cannot comply. If Mrs. Ballard or her representatives want space in the New Mexican to present their views, they may have it. But they may not determine the nature of the news that we are to publish.

We trust this threat was a hasty one and made in excitement. We hope it was because it would not be good to have among us a group that would censor the public information given to a community of 30,000.

Meanwhile (with cheek still tingling) the New Mexican wishes for its neighbors an early settlement of the difficulties that have risen among them and a return to the happy days.

A few days later, attorneys for Ballard and the I AM group arrived in Santa Fe, ostensibly to investigate the Powell matter but they also appeared for Mrs. Ballard in the scheduled January 12, 1951 hearing on the restraining order before Judge Chavez. But there was no hearing. Instead, the lawyers for the New Mexican and for Mrs. Ballard arrived at a settlement in which the injunction action against Ballard was dismissed and Mrs. Ballard issued this statement:

It is a matter of regret if any students of the “I Am” Religious Activity created a public disturbance at the office of the New Mexican the 6^th of January last. It was not and never has been my intention that for any of our people to create any public disturbance, and I sincerely regret that any violence occurred. In making any protest they had in mind, it should have been done peacefully and with dignity.

President and publisher of the New Mexican, Robert McKinney, reiterated the newspaper’s policy of printing the news as they saw fit and graciously accepted Ballard’s statement which the newspaper generously called an “apology.” There was no further action arising of this curious incident. No personal injury suits were filed by Harrison, McGuire or Hay; no property damages were sought and, despite front page photographs as graphic evidence, no criminal charges for assault or battery were lodged. It was as if it had never happened. More interestingly, the Hepzibah Powell case was never again mentioned in the pages of the Santa Fe New Mexican.

Eventually, Ballard and most of the school left Santa Fe to settle in Schaumberg, Illinois where Ballard died in 1971. Today, the numbers of the faithful have dwindled considerably. After Edna’s 1961 death (or “transition” as it is called within the organization), a board of directors now passes along Saint Germain’s messages while Donald Ballard long ago left the movement to run a manufacturing plant. The Mighty I Am is still based in Chicago but maintains about 300 activity “centers” throughout the United States, including a “Sanctuary” in the house off Old Taos Highway in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

I find myself thoroughly puzzled by the whole affair. The New Mexican, victim of an astonishing outrage, responded by yapping like a chihuahua about censorship yet seeking harmonious relations with a patently deranged bag of nuts. Back to “the happy days,” indeed. Its only legal action – a simple injunction – was dumped when la presidente Ballard uttered a mealy-mouthed statement of general regret without even the scent of personal responsibility, a statemen which only the deluded could call an apology. Most tellingly, the newspaper made sure never to offend the Ascended Masters by not mentioning Ballard or the I Am group again.

Perhaps the lesson, if there is one, is this: While the pen may be mightier than the sword, it isn’t mightier than the flaming sword of Saint Germain.

A small footnote: In the course of its reportage, the New Mexican cited St. Germain as the patron saint of the I Am movement. The Count of Saint Germain (allegedly encountered by Guy Ballard on Mount Shasta in 1930) was a real person whose life story is attended by mystery, romantic rumor and outright fable – but he was no saint, at least not one recognized by the Catholic Church.

But there actually is a Saint Germaine. Germaine Cousin was born in France with a deformed right hand and scrofula. Scorned by her stepmother, Germaine was kept apart from the family, slept in a barn and made to care for the sheep. She prayed constantly and signs of her holiness began to appear. One witness saw the waters of an overflowing stream part to allow Germaine to attend Mass. Eventually even her stepmother recognized Germaine’s holiness and asked her back into the family but Germain refused and continued to herd sheep and sleep on a rough vine-mat in the barn. She died in 1601 at the age of 22.

Years later, her body was accidentally exhumed and discovered to be in perfect condition. Many miracles were attributed to Germaine and she was eventually canonized in 1867. She is known as the patron saint of shepherdesses, the disabled and – as the Church delicately puts it – less attractive girls.

Reds, Pinks and Pearly Whites

1955 - The Year the Communists Invaded My Teeth

It began with a notice in the newspaper. On February 10 1955, Walter Kegel, Santa Fe City Councilor and chairman of the City’s Sanitation Committee, announced a public meeting to discuss a proposal to fluoridate Santa Fe’s drinking water.

What no one knew at the time – except for Mrs. Reese P. (Loretta) Fullerton of Santa Fe, New Mexico -- was that the communists had been preparing for this moment since 1930, when American scientists first discovered that fluoride, when applied to the teeth in very low concentration, significantly reduced tooth decay.

As it turned out, this was the only beneficial effect of fluoride, an ion of fluorine formerly known as the aluminum industries leading waste product and pollutant. In high concentration, fluoride was the primary constituent in rat poison. Prolonged exposure to moderate levels of fluoride appeared to cause, in children, both thyroid damage – resulting in uncontrollable weight gain – and neurological damage, resulting in significantly reduced IQ scores.

Even more exotic uses were discovered for the miracle of fluoride. During World War II, Germans and Russians were reported to have used carefully controlled fluoride additives in the drinking water of prisoners of war to “reduce their ability to resist domination by slowly poisoning and narcotizing certain brain centers, rendering them stupid and docile.”

Mrs. Fullerton knew that farsighted Communist party leaders early realized the possibilities of using fluoride to render Americans fat, stupid and docile by simply adding a smidgen of fluoride into the tap water.

In post-war America, communist operatives apparently infiltrated the nation’s medical and scientific apparatus. Utilizing the National Health Institute, an unwitting tool of the communists, the party began a propaganda campaign, persuading the medical and dental establishments that adding fluoride to drinking water in nominally small amounts would reduce tooth decay in children. The campaign was remarkable successful. In 1945, eight test cities (six in America, two in Canada) quickly proved that adding fluoride to drinking water (less than one part per million) significantly reduced tooth decay. The successful test inspired a national health movement, which quickly turned into US health policy so that by 1955, fluoridation had spread to 93 cities across the nation. By the time the idea reached Santa Fe, the City of Hobbs had been drinking fluoridated water for two years.

So strong was the movement for fluoridation that, by 1955, there were only a scattered few who opposed public fluoridation. Some opposed it as mass medication; some saw it as an erosion of personal rights; and some believed it to be contrary to the will of God. And there were some who knew it to be a communist conspiracy.

On February 16, 1955, the City Sanitation Committee meeting took place. Over one hundred members of the local proletariat crowded into the council chambers, almost all in support of fluoridation. The listed speakers in favor of the proposal were Dr. Ralph Lopez, President-elect of the New Mexico Dental Association who also spoke on behalf of the local dental society and Dr. Bergere Kenney, President of both the Santa Fe and the New Mexico Medical Associations. A representative of the New Mexico State Department of Health appeared and pronounced fluoridation cheap, safe and beneficial. Other civic organizations appeared before the Sanitation Committee to urge public fluoridation – The League of Women Voters, the Maternal Health Center and the local PTA. Even the New Mexican posted an editorial in favor of fluoridating the “kiddies.” Not all of these groups were, in fact, agents of the communist party or even fellow travelers. Most, Mrs. Fullerton suspected, were merely dupes in the communist plan for global domination through public fluoridation.

Only four Santa Fe citizens spoke in opposition. Three were members of the I AM Organization, an eccentric local religious group who believed that fluoridation was against the will of the aforementioned God. The only other opponent was Loretta (Mrs. Reese P.) Fullerton.

Mrs. Fullerton had come early to the meeting and distributed “Americanism Bulletins.” These were crudely printed pamphlets, which contained alarming details of the communist conspiracy. Mrs. Fullerton claimed that public fluoridation was communist plot to “wipe out entire communities with greater effectiveness than the atomic bomb.” Mrs. Fullerton then pointed out that New York City – “the strongest Communist center in the United States” – had not yet adopted fluoridation. These were telling points, indeed, but years of propaganda had apparently blinded the American masses to the truth.

Mrs. Fullerton had given the Committee a four-page statement that she had signed as chairwoman of the Legislative Committee of the Santa Fe Woman’s Club and Library Association. When questioned, Mrs. Fullerton admitted the statement did not represent the opinion of the Club. Until that day, the Woman’s Club was apparently unaware of the statement. An officer of the Woman’s Club declared, “As far as the Woman’s Club is concerned in this matter, Mrs. Fullerton is speaking only for Mrs. Fullerton.”

After listening to 26 speakers over three hours, the Sanitation Committee took an informal poll of those in attendance and counted 109 in favor of fluoridation, 4 against and one undecided. The Committee then closed the discussion and, in view of the overwhelming support for the measure, forwarded a favorable recommendation on the proposal to the City Council.

Though it appeared that the communists had won the round, citizen opposition to fluoridation took to the media. A group called the Santa Fe Citizens for Pure Water Committee sponsored a half-page ad warning of the poisonous effects of fluoride. Quickly, an even larger pro-fluoridation ad touting “17 Facts about Fluoridation” was published by, among others, the Santa Fe Junior Chamber of Commerce (a possible communist front?) which urged Santa Fe citizens to “have faith in science.” Pro-fluoridation elements wrote letters to the editor and the New Mexican contributed an editorial, which said, in part:

We hope the City Council will not be sidetracked by the ridiculous claims made by opponents of the measure. The debate should center upon how to put the program into effect and how to pay for it, rather than whether to go ahead. Santa Fe needs and wants fluoridation; it is up to the City Council to figure out how to go about it.

On March 30, the Santa Fe City Council met in regular session and formally took up the ordinance on fluoridation. Those favoring public fluoridation were Dr. Ralph Lopez, speaking for the entire dental health establishment, Dr. David Striffler for the New Mexico Health Department and the lawyer Thomas B. Catron III. Speaking in opposition were Mrs. Nancy Lane, Alfred Fetteral, Reverend Oliver Money, Pastor of the Church of the Nazarene, and Mrs. Reese P. Fullerton.

The newspaper does not record what was said at the council session but the New Mexican reported that Mrs. Fullerton requested that the City Council conduct further study before acting. Apparently, her plea was ineffective. After three hours of speeches, the City Council voted 5 to 2 (with 1 abstaining) in favor of adding fluoride to the City’s drinking water. (Councilors in favor of fluoridation were George Berntsen, Leo Murphy, Walter Kegel, Frank Gomez and Willie Seligman; councilors opposed to fluoridation were Sam Pate and Lou Schifani; the abstaining councilor was Dionicio “Don” Ortiz).

Though the matter appeared to be settled, anti-fluoridation activists continued to agitate. So much so, that the City Council agreed to a further public discussion of on fluoridation when the contract for fluoridating the City’s water came up for vote, despite grumbling by Mayor H. Paul Huss that the ordinance had already been passed.

A clearly vexed New Mexican editor wrote:

In the two months since the council acted, Santa Fe has been victimized by a very small and very loud minority which has fought to incite a hysterical plebeian revolution against science. This small, loud minority doesn’t believe the City Council should consider the recommendations of the highest bodies of scientific research in the nation. ‘Listen to us,’ these people say, ‘we know what we’re talking about. Science is wrong . . .’ (May 23, 1955)

An astonishing 200 citizens appeared at the May 25 Council session to approve the fluoridation contract. Again, Doctors Ralph Lopez and Bergere Kenney appeared and forcefully spoke in favor of fluoridation, joined by representatives of the New Mexico Department of Health, the Parent Teachers Association and, curiously, the Santa Fe Junior Chamber of Commerce. Again the speakers were overwhelmingly in favor of fluoridation. Except one.

Mrs. Reese P. Fullerton stood before the Council and demanded to know if any physician present would prescribe fluorides for her children. When Dr. Brian Moynahan rose to answer that he would, he was “rebuffed” by Mrs. Fullerton who stated he would not be allowed to treat her children.

After 26 speakers, the City Council abruptly adjourned without taking any action on the fluoride question. Without fanfare and in accordance with ordinance, the City’s water department began to introduce fluoride additives to Santa Fe’s drinking water in late summer 1955.

In the end, the communists were victorious. But it may be of some comfort to Mrs. Fullerton, wherever she may be, that New York City began fluoridating its water in 1965, giving the communists a taste of their own medicine.

1954 - Rising Sun on the Alameda

I saw this interesting notice in a 1954 New Mexican newspaper in which the State Purchasing Department offered fifteen “Barracks Buildings” for sale. These “barracks buildings,” the advertisement went on to explain, could be inspected at the “former Jap Camp on West Alameda.” The casual racism in an official government notice was apparently unremarkable in those days.

The advertisement reminded me of Santa Fe’s part in a shameful episode of American history – the imprisonment of 110,000 persons of Japanese ancestry, most of them American citizens, during World War II. Three months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 which directed the War Department to evacuate all persons of Japanese ancestry, citizen or not, from the western coast of America (denominated as a “military area”) and relocate them in Assembly Centers or Relocation Centers somewhere in the nation’s interior.

They were not prisoners of war. Most were first generation Americans of Japanese descent, living ordinary lives in California, Oregon and Washington State as shopkeepers, accountants and doctors – until the War Relocation Authority rounded them up and put them in detention camps for the duration of the war. In the hectic days following the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, most government leaders quickly accepted the need to “relocate” these Japanese Americans as a wartime necessity.

I say most because a few dissented, including FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who went along with the plan anyway, and three Supreme Court Justices who saw it as legalized racism [see the dissenting opinion in Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1944)]. Interestingly, FDR publicly declared his opinion at the time that Japanese “skull patterns” were less developed, accounting for the unusually aggressive nature of the Japanese. Decades later, in 1983, Congress established a Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians to study this matter. The Commission’s report, titled Personal Justice Denied, found no military necessity for the incarceration of Japanese Americans but found the policy was based on “race prejudice, war hysteria and a failure of political leadership.” Congress then authorized payment of $20,000 to each of the internees and President Ronald Reagan issued a public apology.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. This story is about Santa Fe, which occupied a very special place in the history of the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Here’s the short version. Just months after Pearl Harbor, in early 1942, the Department of Justice (not the War Department) bought 80 acres from the New Mexico State Penitentiary. The property, in northwestern Santa Fe next to the river, was an old CCC camp originally built in 1933. New housing was added for the incoming Japanese, basically wood and tarpaper barracks, surrounded by a sturdy fence.

The Santa Fe Camp was not a Relocation or Assembly Center; it was a Justice Department detention camp, specifically designed to house kibei, those Japanese Americans who had been educated in Japan or who had renounced American citizenship – those thought likeliest to cause trouble. Once completed, the Santa Fe Camp received and held 826 Japanese American men, all from California and all of whom were transferred out by the end of summer in 1942. These were quiet times. The internees were considered so docile that they were used by the City of Santa Fe to help groom the local golf course. In exchange, the internees were allowed to play golf on the course – a privilege only a few Santa Feans enjoyed. For the rest of 1942, the camp was home to several hundred German and Italian nationals who happened to be in the United States at the outbreak of the war. This group also included several South American Japanese, most from Peru.By the end of 1943, the Camp held about 2100 Japanese Americans, some of whom were considered troublemakers in other camps.

By 1944, internees across the nation began to chafe at their condition and began a series of protests, some of them quite violent. In March 1945, some internees at the Santa Fe Camp staged a noisy but otherwise civil protest when they were ordered to turn in sweatshirts decorated with rising sun motifs. The protest leaders were forcibly removed and the protest turned into a full-fledged riot. No one was injured but rocks were thrown and a few buildings were vandalized. Eventually, tear gas and clubs were used to quell the riot. Over 300 internees were put in stockade or simply removed from the Santa Fe Camp and transferred to even more restrictive camps. There were no more riots at the Santa Fe Camp for the duration of the war.

When the war against the Japanese was decisively ended in August 1945, the Santa Fe Camp was used as a holding and processing center for other camps and the Santa Fe Camp remained active until about May 1946 when the last of the internees was transferred out. Interestingly, most Santa Feans I’ve asked about those days of the Japanese Internment Camp recall very little about it and the local newspapers of the time rarely mentioned the camp. But there remains tangible evidence of Japanese presence in Santa Fe. Rosario cemetery has graves for two Japanese American men who died during internment. One named Sudo, the other Yoshikawa.

And, in 1999, despite protest from some Bataan Death March veterans, the City of Santa Fe authorized the installation of a bronze plaque, set in a large granite boulder at the Frank Ortiz City Park, to mark the site of the Santa Fe Detention Camp. The installation ceremony, in 2003, was attended by some former internees and the descendants of many others.

By the way, the barracks buildings were ultimately removed and the remainder of the 80 acres was cleared to build the Casa Solana subdivision, a neighborhood of pleasant, sturdy homes spread over the site of what was once Santa Fe’s notorious “Jap Camp.”

1952 - Jackpot Annie

I read this article in Reader’s Digest or maybe a Sunday supplement, about people who won a lottery and the dramatic ways that coming into serious money affected their lives. Some did well, but many squandered it all and a few met tragic ends. It made me think of Annie Baca and how her life turned out. I never knew Annie Baca. But I read about her once in an interesting story in the Santa Fe New Mexican from 1952 about a local family winning a huge jackpot in a national radio contest.

“Stop the Music” aired in Santa Fe on KTRC. It was one of many radio quiz shows on the air in the early fifties, like “Strike it Rich” and “You Bet Your Life” with Groucho Marx. On “Stop the Music,” Bert Parks, the host, called a random number somewhere in the U.S., and offered the listener a prize to name a song after hearing just a few bars played. The orchestra would play for ten seconds or so, then the announcer would shout, “Stop the Music!” and ask the listener to identify the song.

Now the right answer would win a small prize – a television set or a household appliance -- but it also earned a chance for an even bigger prize if the listener could identify the “Mystery Melody!”

This was no easy task. The Mystery Melody was always nearly impossible to identify, but the listener could learn the name of the Mystery Melody by listening to Walter Winchell on the radio. Winchell, still popular with his telegraph style of gossip and right wing political commentary. At some random time during the course of one of his broadcasts, Walter Winchell would announce the name of the upcoming Mystery Melody on “Stop the Music”.

And that brings me to the Baca family of Santa Fe. Mr. E. A. Baca, his wife and three girls lived in an adobe home on Urioste, a narrow street that runs north off Agua Fria down to Alto Street. Mr. Baca had worked for the railroad until an injury forced his retirement so he ran a little washing machine repair shop out of his garage. Mrs. Baca and one of her daughters were cooks at Jaffa’s restaurant, another daughter worked as a housekeeper for Mrs. Cunningham and the youngest, Annie Baca, 23, worked the counter at Taichert’s downtown.

One Sunday evening in 1952, Mrs. Baca answered the phone and promptly became confused when the voice said it was New York calling so Annie took the phone. It was “Stop the Music” calling and, over the national airwaves, Bert Parks asked Annie to identify a song.

Annie correctly identified the first song as “Cold, Cold Heart.” (The Tony Bennett version had been number one for six weeks in 1951 so it was an easy song.) That right answer qualified Annie to win the big jackpot if she could name the Mystery Melody.

Now, as luck would have it, Mr. Baca had been tuned to KTRC in his shop a few days earlier, listening to Walter Winchell, when he heard the name of the Mystery Melody and he wrote it down. So Mr. Baca promptly sent his daughter, Polly, out to the shop to fetch the note back to Annie on the phone. Annie read out the name “We All Have Troubles of our Own.” That was the correct name of the Mystery Melody and the Baca family won the big jackpot.

And what prizes! $16,000 cash, a brand new Kaiser automobile, a big television set, an automatic washer, a new kitchen range, a deep freeze filled with gourmet food, a spinet piano, a new living room suite, new wardrobes for two and a wristwatch for everyone. But wait, as they say on TV, there’s more! The family also won two French poodles along with a year’s supply of dog food, bottles of expensive perfume, cosmetics and the services of a personal maid for a whole year. And the biggest prize was a trip to Cannes, France for the entire family.

The paper carried a wonderful photograph of a jubilant Annie Baca hugging her equally pleased mother. Neighbors called to congratulate them and even Dan Taichert visited in person to wish Annie well, although he was a bit wistful that Annie might not come back to the five and dime store after winning all that cash. This was 1952, after all, when the median income for the average Santa Fe household was about $2900 a year.

Curiously, there was never another article about what happened to the Baca family or what they did with their prizes. Was there a shiny new Kaiser parked on Urioste Street? Did Mrs. Cunningham envy her housekeeper who now had a personal maid of her own? Did Annie Baca ever stroll down the French Riviera, dressed to kill, with twin poodles on a leash?

Whatever happened to Annie Baca, the girl from the five and dime? I never found out but I like to think that Annie lived out a Hollywood fairy tale, traveling to France, perhaps meeting and marrying a handsome young nobleman and settling into a villa on the Cote d’Azure. And that’s where she is today, gazing at the Mediterranean from the balcony of her villa, a very long way from Urioste Street in Santa Fe.