The Little Old Murder From Pasadena
A retired police sergeant and a historian discuss history and true crime in the City of Roses.
The Little Old Murder From Pasadena
Murder on Mount Lowe
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In this episode, we discuss some of the incidents that occurred on the historic Mount Lowe Railway and resort, including an attempted murder/suicide from 1902.
Music credits to Fesilyan Studios.
Welcome. That was attractive. Welcome back to the little old murder from Pasadena. I'm the historian Elise, and I'm here with my co-host.
SPEAKER_03:Victor Cass, retired police sergeant with the Pasadena, California Police Department with over 30 years of experience.
SPEAKER_00:And today we've brought you an older case, actually. We're going to be talking about murder on Mount Lowe. Mount Lowe was a mountain resort with an incline railway up in the San Gabriel Mountains, uh, just above Pasadena and Altadena.
SPEAKER_03:You called that a fununcular, right?
SPEAKER_00:Funicular?
SPEAKER_03:Something like that.
SPEAKER_00:I think it's funicular, but I could be wrong. I don't know. They both sound funny to me. But yeah, it was um if you took the streetcars up through Pasadena and Altadena, if you go up lake, Thaddeus Lowe, who built the railway, he didn't own the uh streetcars that went up. But once you got to the top of Lake, you could take this little trolley through Rubio Canyon. And then there was Rubio Pavilion in the can in the canyon there. Had a hotel, a restaurant. You could get your tickets and relax there before taking the incline railway that went up to Echo Mountain. There were two more hotels that he built there, and then later on he built uh an alpine sort of railway that went further up into the mountains.
SPEAKER_03:This is a regular kind of winding railway.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, uh-huh. Uh he originally intended for it to go all the way to the peak of Mount Lowe, but he didn't get there, so they ended up um further down he built Alpine Tavern, and that was the hotel that lasted the longest.
SPEAKER_03:And correct me if I'm wrong, but you can still find remains and ruins of these sites up in the mountains there?
SPEAKER_00:Yes, you can. You can still, you know, since the Eaton fire, I pulled up a map of the neighborhood where the Rubio trail starts between these two houses. It's really funky. Um, but I pulled that up and both of those homes have been burnt. So I don't know what that trail looks like now. But you used to be able to see um the railroad ties like as you're walking through the canyon, and then once you got down far enough, you would be able to look up at the incline railway and see where it was.
SPEAKER_03:I remember hiking through those areas and seeing those railroad ties and parts of the gears and concrete foundations of some of these buildings.
SPEAKER_00:So you might have gone to Echo Mountain. Possibly that's the most uh popular hiking spot where two of those hotels were built. And then you could also go like up through the back of Angelus Crest to get to the Alpine Tavern. You can come down instead of going up. Right.
SPEAKER_03:So so this case is uh kind of interesting, especially for Pasadena history buffs, because you know, rarely do you get like a kind of a scandalous, you know, uh crime at a historic Pasadena site.
SPEAKER_00:Yes. And it's funny because Mount Lowe and Thaddeus Lowe, they always touted this as the safest railway in the world. Like there were no incidents, they did everything possible to make sure that you know the incline railway was safe and everyone there was safe, but there actually were plenty of incidents and scandals there.
SPEAKER_03:And of course, today we'll be talking about uh one that occurred in 1902. So we're going back to the archives on this, uh, to a very kind of troubled young man of means.
SPEAKER_00:Yes. I I wonder if he had uh affluenza. Is that what they got that what was his Brock or something like that?
SPEAKER_03:He managed to get off from I think that uh in our case today, uh James Treadwell definitely suffered from affluenza.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So he uh he didn't do much, but his dad was pretty wealthy.
SPEAKER_03:Um San Francisco, correct?
SPEAKER_00:He wasn't from San Francisco, but he moved there during the gold rush.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_00:And he was one of the few to strike it rich because he did not go for the gold. He started to sell supplies to the miners, and you know, those are the guys who really made all the money.
SPEAKER_02:Sure.
SPEAKER_00:Um, and then he uh started to buy up real estate in uh the Bay Area, I believe.
SPEAKER_03:Probably should have spent more time uh raising and teaching his son the right lessons.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, but he he died pretty young though, so I don't think that he had an opportunity to impress much upon his son. I don't know if that had something to do with it.
SPEAKER_03:Right. Um so the boy, James Treadwell, um uh his as we mentioned, his dad does pass away. Um, and uh young Treadwell inherits a lot of money.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, he does.
SPEAKER_03:I think he had two sisters.
SPEAKER_00:Two sisters, and one he ha he did have a sister that died several months before this accident, too. Um, but as you're saying, he was um very troubled guy. There was one incident with Louise Buchanan that you were kind of laughing at.
SPEAKER_03:Yes, they they they used a very arcane expression, which actually, as historian Elisa and I were looking into this case, we had never heard this phrase before.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so Louise Buchanan, they say was a a woman of the half-life.
SPEAKER_03:Half-world.
SPEAKER_00:Of the half-world, sorry. Yes. Um, and I Googled it, and the French word for it is demi-monde.
SPEAKER_03:So the half-world meaning like a a courtesan or um a woman who would, you know, sell her body to kind of a fancy word for a prostitute, but a little more like a little more high class, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Catering to like the elite of society almost.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. So this lady, uh Miss Buchanan, uh, I guess young James Treadwell uh has like this affair, this torrid affair with her, and it is probably what we would consider abusive.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Um and he's also, I'm sure, promising her a lot that he's not delivering on. He is a very ladies man.
SPEAKER_03:Sure. He's all the he and he has a kind of a really what I call in my experience in the police world a very dangerous combination. Ladies men who also suffer from extreme jealousy.
SPEAKER_02:Yes.
SPEAKER_03:Um, these are guys who would have uh probably not great control of their emotions due to lash out and violent rages. Yes. Um and I guess at one time he assaulted this lady.
SPEAKER_00:Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_03:Uh Louise Buchanan, beat her up in a restaurant.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. He was charged with assault to murder, which is um attempted murder. Right. Basically.
SPEAKER_03:Um so so this young man, you know, he's 18, he has a lot of dough, um, and he's, you know, getting involved, getting in trouble with the police already, even though he's kind of a wealthier figure. Um not that Louise Buchanan, this this courtesan didn't have her own issues, as uh correct me if I'm wrong, she later attacked him in the street and beat him with a horse whip.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:So I mean, it's kind of a back and forth with these two.
SPEAKER_00:Um I don't know, was it or was she defending herself?
SPEAKER_03:I mean, possibly. Um, but needless to say, it wasn't a good relationship and it ended uh shortly thereafter.
SPEAKER_00:I kind of blame him because there was another woman too, Georgia Woods. He apparently lived with her and then ended up beating her so bad that everyone thought that she would die. I have a quote saying, The woman's neck and head were one big blotch.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I mean that there's no doubt that this guy, this young man, this this man uh of means, uh this rich kid is a bad character. I mean, uh violence comes to him easily, he assaults women, um, he gets in trouble with the police department.
SPEAKER_00:And he has plenty of money to keep funding whatever it is that he wanted to do.
SPEAKER_03:Right. Drugs, alcohol, who knows what he's doing. Um uh he ends up becoming a big drinker. Um and keep in mind this is all in uh San Jose, I think, where he lived, the the time this is happening.
SPEAKER_00:San Jose I think it was San Jose or San Francisco.
SPEAKER_03:Well, yeah, he had he had they had moved to San Jose where he that's where it kind of he became known in San Jose social circles where all this trouble that he's he's getting into is taking place in San Jose. Um this is a uh large city in the Central Valley in California.
SPEAKER_00:Um while they're they're they're known as a San Francisco family though.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, yeah, well for sure, because that's because that's where they're from. But I guess you know, for whatever reason they moved to San Jose. Yeah. And you know, then he uh he moves in with his sister in Santa Clara for a while.
SPEAKER_00:Um but before that he attended the University of the Pacific with Abby.
SPEAKER_03:Abby Abigail Waters, she's from Petaluma, California, right? Yes, yeah. She's a student, I guess, too.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, they're both going to the University of the Pacific together.
SPEAKER_03:And supposedly this Abby is the hottest-looking girl at the school, real a real looker, right?
SPEAKER_00:Yes. So of course, Treadwell needs to have her. Of course. But he doesn't get her at first. Um, she ends up having a relationship with her music teacher.
SPEAKER_03:Well, but that's because Treadwell gets expelled so from the university. So keep in mind his troubles uh didn't follow him necessarily to the school. He's the trouble, he's the source of the trouble, and you know who knows what he did at the university to get himself kicked out, but he's kicked out, which removes him from Abby's presence and gives Abby some time to fall for her music teacher.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, which is another weird uh situation of its own that I I won't go into. But anyway, that relationship with the music teacher falls apart. Uh and when Jimmy Boy hears about this, you know, he calls up the old Hottie from his school.
SPEAKER_03:Doing a little paper clipping is what we'd refer to this as today.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, who hasn't called up an old flame that uh they heard broke up with their last boyfriend to that is what happened, and they end up getting together and getting married. Yeah, she had two, I believe, two sons by this guy already, or two children, maybe only one of them was a son.
SPEAKER_02:Right, I think, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Because uh Jimmy James Treadwell ends up adopting the son the other boy as his own. Yes.
SPEAKER_03:So now he's married to the prettiest girl from his old school, and you know, it's not a long marriage because this happened shortly after they got married.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Um they were they on did they come to Los Angeles on vacation or was it a business trip?
SPEAKER_00:I don't know. I'm not sure, but they they were in Pasadena staying at La Casa Grande Hotel.
SPEAKER_03:Right, which was at Los Robles and Colorado, for those into the old hotels of Pasadena. Obviously, it doesn't exist anymore. Um, but yeah, supposedly it actually was kind of like one of the swankier hotels in Pasadena at the time, at the turn of the century. The Casa Grande Hotel, uh they're in um what today would be known as the uh border between uh our neighborhood civic center and playhouse village. And so while they're in Pasadena, he decides to ask her to go on a well, first, what's he doing the last couple of nights before this happens, this crime?
SPEAKER_00:I mean, he's been on like a bender the past few days.
SPEAKER_03:He's been out drinking, carousing, drunk every night.
SPEAKER_00:He'll, I think, come back and just lock himself in his room. His wife is very nervous. Uh the night before this all happens, he's locked in his room the whole night. But in the morning, it seems like he's like refreshed in some way. And Abby is like, oh, this is great. You know, maybe we can have a nice day, we can go out to Mount Lowe, you know, we'll start in Rubio Canyon. So they leave their child with a sitter, and then they end up going to Mount Lowe at around what 10 a.m.
SPEAKER_03:It's it's interesting that you bring up this whole uh he felt refreshed thing. And I want to talk about just from for a second, just based on my own mental health uh experience as a part of a mental health crisis team. Um oftentimes people who are at risk for suicide often they don't kill themselves because they're so depressed or they're so drunk or they're so out of it. Um and it's when they became when they let's say they take their medication or they're refreshed or they're on an upswing that they get the energy to kill themselves. So it wouldn't surprise me if now, you know, he's woke woken up refreshed and he gets now the desire and energy and drive to decide to end his life that day.
SPEAKER_00:That's an interesting perspective because what was going through my head was you know, maybe something happened during the night where he made plans. He's like, okay, I'm you know, I'm gonna kill myself tomorrow or I'm gonna kill her tomorrow, or whatever it was, and that just having a plan to move forward has made him feel better in some way. So he's woken up ready to do whatever it is that he has planned.
SPEAKER_03:So, you know, whichever kind of angle it is there, he's definitely now has the energy to carry out this plan. And so they go to the trailhead, right?
SPEAKER_00:Yes, so this is October 8th, 1902. And it's nearing, they're walking around Rubio Canyon, having a nice time, and it's nearing 11 o'clock, and the 11 o'clock incline car is descending. It's coming. It's on its way down, right? It's on its way down into Rubio Canyon. And what's interesting is that on this uh car is Professor Larkin, and he's one of the main characters of the Mount Low Railway. He came to replace Professor Swift, who was in charge of the uh uh observatory up there, and he's kind of a weird guy, too. He's has this belief in like the lost city of Atlantis, and he's kind of like a weird character. But Professor Larkin and the others on this uh car hear two gunshots. Right. And once they exit the car, they see Abby running up to them with blood all over her head.
SPEAKER_03:Right. But that's what they see. Now let's talk about what Abby saw to lead up to that moment. So as they're walking along this trail, uh, they decide to take a seat at a bench and chit-chat kind of just idly about random topics, and that's where James decides to let her know that he has a plan.
SPEAKER_00:They quote him as saying, You are too good for me. I'm going to kill myself, but we'll kill you first. It sounds like a weird thing to say. I don't think he said that verbatim. Sure.
SPEAKER_03:Maybe some version of that, but imagine poor Abby sitting there thinking that she's gonna have this nice afternoon with her young husband, and he says this thing basically, hey, I'm gonna kill you, and then he reaches in, pulls out, and she sees the gun.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:She freaks out and she tries to wrestle with him.
SPEAKER_00:Yes. I think at one point he had even like pushed the gun up against her chest, and she's freaking out.
SPEAKER_03:She pushes it away from her, but he's able to kind of get her and then start beating her, like pistol whipping her. That's where the head wound comes into play when the blood dripping down on her eyes.
SPEAKER_00:Right. Um, but when they when they find that revolver, they found that the butt and the trigger guard had been broken. Right.
SPEAKER_03:Because he's which hit somebody pretty hard uh to break the butt of a gun. And so she got you know clobbered pretty good. Yeah. Um, but she is able to run away and and is and get away from him, whereupon she hears the shots.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, she's running away, she hears one shot, and then she hears another.
SPEAKER_03:I guess the first shot deflected.
SPEAKER_00:No, this is what's weird. The first shot, he tries to shoot himself in the heart, I believe, but he's so he's shooting through his chest.
SPEAKER_03:It's a weird, you have to, yeah, it's a weird angle that you have to kind of like I I remember being on some suicides where a person successfully shoots themselves in the heart, you know. Um it is kind of an awkward way to hold a gun. Yeah. Um oftentimes people try to commit suicide that way where they try to shoot themselves in the torso, but it the gun, you know, jerks up and yeah, and he did.
SPEAKER_00:He missed.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, so he missed everything vital, um, you know, um, and then he puts the gun to his temple and pulls the trigger, and that's the fatal shot. So it's a suicide. It's an attempt murder and a suicide.
SPEAKER_00:Yes.
SPEAKER_03:You know.
SPEAKER_00:And um they all when they get to the scene, they see like Abby's Bobby pins scattered all over the floor. They they see him there with you know his gunshots.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And they're taking Abby to a spring to try and wash off her wounds. They're wondering, like, was she shot too? Like, no one really knows what happened. Yeah, they they couldn't tell whether she was hit, and then once they realized And she's also not wanting to talk at this point, she's not wanting to admit who she is or who he is. I think she's probably trying to avoid a scandal or sure. She might be, I'm sure it just is very shaken up.
SPEAKER_03:Very traumatized, absolutely.
SPEAKER_00:Um, but they do end up finding an ID card in his pocket, and then they're able to identify him. And then all of course, all the newspapers in California are like uh millionaire's son tries to commit suicide and attempted. Right.
SPEAKER_03:Exactly. Um interestingly enough, uh there's kind of an issue after this, you know, about a a a will of some kind.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, he just before this all happened, I don't I'm not certain how long before, but pretty soon before he kills himself, he had changed his will to leave everything to Abby and to her kids. Right. And so there's this whole debate over since he was like drinking and like on this bender and everything, I think a lot of his family members were trying to say that he wasn't in his right mind at the time and are trying to contest the fact that he left all of his money to them.
SPEAKER_03:Right, instead of, you know, the family getting any of the his fortune. Right.
SPEAKER_00:Um but it it looks like it it sticks, and she ends up getting the money.
SPEAKER_03:And so w whatever happens to young Abby, what does her fate look like?
SPEAKER_00:She ends up dying in Pasadena in 1912. Um but I think they bring her back to Petaluma or up to the Bay Area again to bury her. She's not buried here in Mount.
SPEAKER_03:She was kind of young too. It wasn't not like she lived to a ripe old age.
SPEAKER_00:No, she was only 35. But I found a photograph of her. At first, I thought it was an old lady. I was confused. I'm like, who is it? But then you zoom in, and actually it was her. It's just the dress of the day, she looked a lot more than a little bit.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, and I'm sure you know, people looked a little older back in those days, and maybe she was a little weathered.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. But she was only 35. I wonder what happened to her.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, but this is 35 in 1912 years.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Who knows? Who knows? Yeah, kind of a weird, kind of a weird little uh tragic uh incident uh that to happen at Pasadena, not involving Pasadenians, you know, people who are from out of town who came here and um just kind of went sideways with each other. And you know, now, you know, this Mount Lowe, uh Rugio Canyon area, just one more kind of bizarre story that's etched into the history of this region.
SPEAKER_00:Right, you know, from and I can't claim to know of another murder per se on Mount Lowe, but there were a lot of really bad incidents that happened there. Um the Echo Mountain House, which was sort of like the the main hotel, the main place that people went to go visit, ended up burning down in a fire in 1900. Uh and this is kind of interesting considering like the Eaton fire and everything that we had just gone through. Um, in 1899, there was a huge fire there. Um, and so a bunch of Pasadenians were trying to put the fire out. Uh, one man ended up dying trying to fight this fire in 1899. Also in 1899, in the summer, remember I said that they were trying to say Mount Low is like the safest railway in the world. But Theodore Kretschmar and his brother, they lived in Altadena. They he was a part owner of the Las Flores Water Company. Him and his brother were walking up through Rubio Canyon to check on their water supply when they saw these loose wires dangling. It was a live wire that was like four feet from the ground. He goes to like swat it away from his face and he's electrocuted so bad that his brother has to, I don't know, knock him loose somehow. And it killed all the nerves in his hand, and then he got gangrene, and then they had to amputate both of his hands like below the elbow. And so, because of that, because Mount Lowe, the safest railway in the world, had just left these live wires everywhere, he ended up suing him in 1901 and earned$10,000. Wow. A lot back then. But he did lose both of his hands. So in 1905, Professor Larkin, who we heard going down the incline railway, he heard the shots when the treadwall case, yeah. Yes. So Professor Larkin, there's this insane fire in December of 1905. This would sound scarily familiar to us. But there's these insane winds up on Echo Mountain. Professor Larkin, he's preparing to like secure all of the stuff and the observatory, trying to like take out like all the valuables and everything. He looks out the window and he looks at the casino. The casino is not like what we would think of, but more of as a dance hall sort of place.
SPEAKER_03:This isn't pachenga or uh morongo.
SPEAKER_00:This is but he sees the roof of this casino sail up in the air because the winds are so crazy, and it starts sailing through the air towards the incline and lands on top of the powerhouse. Wow that powers the whole railway. There's like several they don't know exactly where the fire started. They think maybe from the powerhouse, maybe from like a garbage crematory. Um, but basically, this fire ends up burning down all of Echo Mountain, like all of the buildings on Echo Mountain, I think, except for the observatory. And that's the only one that still stands. And that's pretty much the end of like the resort on Echo Mountain itself. People would keep coming to the railway like through the 20s and 30s, Pacific Electric eventually ended up owning it. Um, Huntington, who owns Huntington Library. Um and so they would continue going up to the Alpine Tavern through the 20s and 30s. But Rubio and Echo Mountain is pretty much done at this point.
SPEAKER_03:Like I said, an interesting part of Pasadena history, a famous locale, and you know, but not without its own sordid crime stories. Well, this was interesting to go back to the archives on this one, Elise. Um I think maybe what for the next episode, go back to a more modern case.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, we'll switch it up again.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Um this was fun to talk about. I want to keep talking about Mallow. If anyone wants to.
SPEAKER_03:We could go on forever and ever on this one.
SPEAKER_00:This is what I wrote my uh my graduate paper on. Your master's thesis, right? Yeah, that's why I'm such a smarty cant about it.
SPEAKER_03:All right. Well, tune in next week, right?
SPEAKER_00:Yes, we'll see you next week for another Little Old Murder from Pasadena.