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
Victim at the Vandervort
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Victor and Alyse discuss the bizarre, 1925 unsolved murder of an eccentric spiritualist in Old Pasadena.
And we are back with another Little Old Murder from Pasadena. I'm your historian Elise, and I'm here with my co-host.
SPEAKER_02:Victor Cass, a retired police sergeant with over 30 years of experience with the Pasadena California Police Department.
SPEAKER_00:And I have more pure gold for you today.
SPEAKER_02:That's right. Elise pulls another miracle out of her historical hat and finds a bizarre murder case from the early 20th century.
SPEAKER_00:It's also like one of the most exciting things that I found out so far this entire year because I have realized that I once had a slumber party in a murder apartment.
SPEAKER_02:Yes. So for our listeners out there, what Elise is referencing is a building in Old Pasadena where this murder occurred, which still exists.
SPEAKER_00:Yes. So let's go back in time, not too far, just to when I was a young one of uh maybe 12 or so. My uncle had a business on the store on South Raymond in the heart of Old Town. And my cousin and I would often hang out there, like playing on the computers and stuff. This is actually a very old building. It might be one of our oldest ones in Old Town because it goes back all the way to 1894. It's kind of weird because it had originally like this open stairway that went up to the second floor. And then once you were in the second floor, there was this long tinted skylight that ran the length of it. And I remember my cousin and I like doing cartwheels up and down this, and once we had a contest to see who could run backward the fastest, and I did, but I also fell on my tailbone and bruised it very badly, and I had a very hurt butt. So yeah, I hurt my butt where this uh murder takes place.
SPEAKER_02:Yes. And uh I suggested we uh they might have had to set up a little crime scene around Elise's poor little hurt bottom there. Um, but for those of you who are familiar with Old Town Pasadena or Old Pasadena as the neighborhood's actually called, this would be on South Raymond. It's called the Vandervoort Building. Yes. Um, it's where Blick's Art Supplies is and the Neon Arcade is. It's in that block, that two-story uh old style building. Uh the stairwell that Elise mentions still exists, but is there's a door covering the sidewalk entrance. So you do you know have to be led inside this building. But it is one of the oldest buildings in Pasadena. And tell us about uh the subject of our story today and what he was doing there in the Vanderboort building.
SPEAKER_00:So this episode is about Lucius Colburn. Funny name. He was born in Vermont in 1854. He had a younger brother who died, and I'm speculating that this is what got him into his interest of spiritualism.
SPEAKER_02:Along with spiritualism, uh, just to give our listeners some context, uh spiritualism kind of was a broad spectrum of things. Um talking to people from beyond the beyond, tarot, uh all kinds of things would have been involved in spiritualism.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so Colburn himself worked as a medium, and then he started to give traveling lectures on spiritualism. He also held seances, you know, where you can speak to the dead. And that's why I thought, you know, maybe the loss of his brother is what got him into all of this. Right. But by the 1890s, he's uh referred to as Reverend, and so I think he is I'm sure also um a Christian because he's preaching at these churches. Um he's giving sermons on Sundays. One quote I liked was that Colburn, quote, had convinced many a doubting Thomas of spirit return.
SPEAKER_02:Yes. Uh a sermon like this would have been uh kind of normal or a breath of fresh air for Pasadena's in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Again, this was a very religious city. Um churches almost on every block. Um so this wouldn't have been an unusual thing to see in Pasadena.
SPEAKER_00:No, he definitely was an eccentric character, but Pasadena was, as we said, a place of like experimentation with religious progress and all this kind of stuff. He moved to California in 1903. He attended a bunch of spiritual associations, he traveled to uh Los Angeles and San Diego to attend lectures and conventions and that sort of thing. He is listed in 1913 as uh Mr. Lucius Colburn, pastor of the Progressive Church in Pasadena. He also, it is said, was once uh an operator of the Carlton Hotel in Pasadena.
SPEAKER_02:That's interesting. Pasadena was very well known for its grand and uh luxurious hotels throughout our city. Now, the Carlton Hotel would have also been an old town.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it was not far at all from the Vandervoort. It was at there at the time, 23 East Colorado, the Carlton Hotel was a big three-story, beautiful Italian hotel. Um, I'll try to post some pictures to our social media because it was just this giant, like beautiful, opulent hotel. It's now gone. Very sad. But it is now the exchange block. They redid it in 1929, right? And so you can see it still in Old Town as the exchange block.
SPEAKER_02:Uh, Mi Piachi's restaurant is there on the ground floor, and this this building is right next door to the uh pottery barn. That building at 14 North Fair Oaks, which is at the corner of Fair Oaks in Colorado Boulevard. You'll see just one uh east of that location from the north side of the street. Um again, this is a very famous populated area in Pasadena. You want to visit these locations, you can, especially like except the Vandervoort building where our case today takes place.
SPEAKER_00:Um so yeah, he was manager of this Carlton Hotel for a while. Very fancy, had an original Otis elevator there and a restaurant, so very fancy place. Um, but by 1925, which is when our story takes place, Lucius Colburn is living at the Vandervoort.
SPEAKER_02:And he's now 70, right? By this time.
SPEAKER_00:He is 70 years old, about 70, 71, something like that. And he is renting out furnished rooms there at the Vandervoort from that second floor there.
SPEAKER_02:So he's kind of like the manager of this building.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's not. It would later be listed as the Allen Hotel, but if you look at the city directories, it's not one of the like certified hotels of Pasadena. It's kind of just he had like a block of rooms, he furnished them and started renting them out to people.
SPEAKER_02:Kind of like a glorified boarding house slash motel.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, kinda sort of.
SPEAKER_02:Pinzion or whatever you want to call it.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So September 3rd of 1925. Could have been September 2nd, depending on the newspaper you're reading. Poor Lucius Colburn was found strangled to death in his bed at the Vanderborn.
SPEAKER_02:That's right. Apparently the uh front door to his room was left open, and one of the boarders thought that was suspicious and opened the door inside.
SPEAKER_00:One says it was a rumor that um noticed the door, as you said, and found him. But another account says that it was a nurse to uh Colburn, Mrs. Alma Hertz, who knocked on his door with his breakfast, and when she was knocking on his door, noticed something odd about it. Now, Colburn has a very weird room. He slept behind, the paper says, a very heavy reinforced door that had this big iron chain. So I guess he was very afraid of being burgled.
SPEAKER_02:Well, he had good cause to be because according to what uh I've learned about this guy is he didn't really trust Banks. I guess he carried and held all of his valuables there in his room.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, and so that's why he was very antsy about protecting himself. And so Alma Hertz sees the lock on the door is not connected, and she's like, that's odd. So she pushes the door open and she sees him lying flat on his back, his hands tied, a gag placed in his mouth, and he's strangled with a silk handkerchief. There's a silk handkerchief stuffed down his throat.
SPEAKER_02:Right. Um, now keep in mind when we say strangled, we don't mean that whoever the suspects were purposely like put their hands around his necks and strangled him. What we mean is that in the placement of this gag down the mouth and throat of this 70-year-old poor guy, uh, he suffocated on this thing. Yeah. Like it choked him to death.
SPEAKER_00:That's actually what happened in the Leopold and Loeb case when they killed little Bobby Franks. I think they bashed him over the head, but what really killed him was that they had stuffed a rag down his throat and he couldn't breathe anymore.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So that's what happened to Colburn, it seems.
SPEAKER_02:And he's tied up in this bed. So there he is on his back, tied up, maybe both hands to the posts at the end with this gag in his mouth.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Very unusual way to find a dead murder victim.
SPEAKER_00:It is. Um, so according to this account, she screams, other people rush in to help, the police are summoned, and then his body is taken to Burnham Undertaker's, which at the time was at 317 Lincoln. Like I said, these are conflicting reports. Right. I'm not sure if I really believe this account of the nurse knocking with the breakfast. It seems a little too tidy of a story for me.
SPEAKER_02:You're not suggesting that in 1925 we had problems with fake news as well, are you, Elise?
SPEAKER_00:Oh, absolutely. And this is coming from the Los Angeles Evening Express. I f they're they fancify their stories. Um the art other articles that I use are from the LA Times, and they're a little bit more reliable than this, and they contradict this story. And we have detective Captain Charles A. Betts leading the investigation into this case.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, he would have been a senior guy, a seasoned uh homicide investigator with Pasadena PD. Um, our chief at the time was Charles Kelly. Um he's one of our longest-serving chiefs uh in our history. Uh, was the chief of the Pasadena Police Department for about 20 years he was there.
SPEAKER_00:Hmm. So they have like the best men on the case to figure out what happened to poor Colburn.
SPEAKER_02:It's an interesting crime scene, too, because his room is tossed. There's stuff everywhere. The cops are thinking, you know, maybe robbery is a motive. It's a little weird how he's tied up. But they find some stuff that kind of throws some questions about robbery or burglary being the motive.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, a few things were left behind. One of them, the single clue, C-L-E-W, as they would say, was this weird shape tool like an ice pick. Right. Very interesting. You know who else was killed with an ice pick in Mexico.
SPEAKER_01:Good old Trotsky. Good old Trotsky. Except he was killed by his own people.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. But, anyways, he wasn't uh ice picked in the head like Trotsky. They use this weird tool to punch through the screws in his door.
SPEAKER_02:I think it was the hinges they're knocking the hinges. The thing the pole out from the hinge. And um this little tool is about five inches long. Past APD detectives are really focusing in on this tool because, as Elise points out, that's one of their strongest clues. Um, I myself remember when I was a detective, um, some of the things that we would do, we had unusual items or things that we know may have been purchased locally. Uh, we might take photos of the item and go to you know, pawn shops or hardware stores or whatever and show them around and say, hey, did you guys sell this to anybody? Do you recognize this type of tool? Um, does this look familiar? And I guess that's what the uh past DNP detectives did in this case.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it seems like they did go around to the local hardware stores and all of that, trying to track down this tool, but no one had sold it and no one even really knew exactly what it was.
SPEAKER_02:That's right, because it was a little unusual. It didn't have like a pointed end, like an ice pick, as Elise pointed out. It had kind of a flat uh little tip, um, almost like for punt for pushing something out. It wasn't a sharpened edge.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so that led them to believe maybe it's like a specialty tool. Who knows if it was made for like typewriter repairs or who knows what in the end of it.
SPEAKER_02:It is unusual that that they didn't find anybody uh that even recognized it. That's a little strange.
SPEAKER_00:No, but they thought, like, okay, if this is a specialty tool, if we find where it came from, that will lead us directly to the guy.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_00:Problem is they never found out what this tool was.
SPEAKER_02:They didn't. But um they did end up arresting somebody behind this.
SPEAKER_00:So detectives get wind of these two men who were seen to be hanging out with Colburn right before his murder, and basically the two weeks preceding his death, just these two men hanging out with him. And so they're trying to track these guys down.
SPEAKER_02:Look, whenever whenever uh detectives are looking into a murder like this, whether it's the olden days or today, um, we want to find out who the murder victim was last in contact with, who'd they last talked to, who was hanging out with them. We want to get their names, their numbers, find out you know, where they are. They're gonna get brought in for questioning.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and detectives think that it's probably someone that he knew because of the fact that whoever came to rob him or kill him brought that tool with him, knowing what sort of room that Colburn had there, knowing that he had that weird door, right? Knowing that he had valuables there.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, if the police theorize that the suspect had already previously been inside Colburn's room.
SPEAKER_00:Yes.
SPEAKER_02:They would have known the layout, they would have known what an eccentric character he was, they would have known that he would have had all his money and his valuables there inside his his his uh where he lived.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so they're wondering, you know, was this a robbery? Was did they just, you know, tie him down on the bed and they're rifling through his things and trying to take all his valuables, and then, you know, the old man accidentally died by being, you know, gagged to death on this rag or s I don't know if it even was a silk thing stuffed down his throat. But there were five other people living in the hotel at that time. None really heard anything except there were two friends who thought that they heard moans at around like 2 a.m. But Colburn often had nightmares, so they thought, like, you know, maybe it's just a nightmare or something like that. And so they didn't go to check on him. They also theorized that, you know, maybe he had been entertaining people in his room at the time. And maybe the door was removed after the fact.
SPEAKER_02:To make it seem like.
SPEAKER_00:To make it look like he was burgled, and maybe robbery wasn't the motive at all.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so there's a lot of theories that are being kind of tossed around as to, you know, why this guy was murdered, who the suspects were. I mean, just on the face of it, you know, I told Elise, I thought it was odd that he was tied up in the manner that he was. You know, people are gonna go in and rob you in your in your apartment or your room. They're not gonna walk in there and elaborately tie, you know, your legs and your arms to a four-poster bed and put a gag down your throat. That's very unusual. Yeah, they're gonna want to clunk you, get you killed, get you knocked out dead right right away. Maybe tie your hands behind your back or something and like get in there and do their business and get out. Um, it seemed like they went through like a lot of rigor moral to uh uh get him in the position that he was found in, you know, which kind of led me to believe that there might have been other things involved in in whatever was going on that night. Um, like I said, he was an eccentric character.
SPEAKER_00:Let's talk about his eccentric character, because he was known in Pasadena, he's an eccentric man. He was known to have bizarre trinkets. He was into collecting um antiques and things from they said back then, the Orient. Um that's why they listed that he had like a jade ring from East India that was missing from his room and some other things. Well, initially they thought it was missing from his room. But he was in 1918, came into some legal trouble that's right for lewd and lascivious conduct.
SPEAKER_02:Right, which I thought was interesting and you know, kind of gave me the the theory that maybe uh old Lucius was involved in some, let's just say, lewd and lascivious playtime with his guests the night of his murder. That wouldn't surprise me. That definitely would have been an angle. And who knows if Pascal police detectives also didn't think that at the time. I'm sure they did. You know, they would have been familiar with this guy's background, they would have learned this information um about him. So, again, there were some things about the way they tossed his room, you know, they left$300 in cash there, which in 1925 is a lot of money. That's you know, almost a couple thousand dollars in today's money.
SPEAKER_00:So that money that was in his wallet, there's some debate about that. Was that just left out in the open, or was that something like whoever robbed the place kind of like rifled through things and threw stuff on top and just like missed the wallet and didn't see it? Or were they just not there for the money at all?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, like I said, it could have been some weird thing they were involved with.
SPEAKER_00:And the papers they didn't like in 1925, the papers didn't talk about homosexuality. They would just hint to it, they would allude to it in certain ways. For example, There's a quote. Another theory based on Colburn's asserted past perversities that holds revenge as the motive. They would also hint to an intimate friend of his, which was a man.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_00:Um, so it's possible that he was gay, right?
SPEAKER_02:And the detectives are thinking maybe this is like a homosexual kind of love triangle gone bad.
SPEAKER_00:Right. Because on September 8th, now this is five, six days after he was found dead, they find this missing jewelry and this gold watch that he had that was supposed to be missing, and the police thought all along that the robbers and the killers had taken it. But they find this watch and other jewelry in a storeroom that's adjoining his bedroom. And that makes you think, why did the robbers not take it? If that's what they were there for.
SPEAKER_02:And why did the police not find it five days prior to the night of the murder? Uh keep in mind that, you know, in a homicide scene, you know, detectives are gonna write search warrants for the victim's house. They're gonna search every room in the house, they're gonna search cars, um, they're gonna go through everything. And I'm really surprised that even in 1925, these guys didn't get into that adjacent room and find all this these items.
SPEAKER_00:And it makes me wonder if this adjoining room, if the robbers would have even had access to it from Colburn's room.
SPEAKER_02:Maybe not. I mean, who knows?
SPEAKER_00:And it makes you think like if it took the detectives five, six days to find it, it could be that, you know, it could have been more hidden. Yeah, when they were there.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Um, but you know, when they find all these things that were supposed to be missing, they're like, there's not a single thing stolen from this guy.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, very quickly, uh, robbery is slowly losing its cachet as the motive for this murder.
SPEAKER_00:So they are able to find one of these very two suspicious men on South Raymond, not far from the Vanderbort where the murder took place. The detectives arrest him and they grill him.
SPEAKER_02:That's right. They put him under the lamp for about a good 24 hours.
SPEAKER_00:Nice 24 hour sweating. You want to say that's not torture?
SPEAKER_02:It wasn't torture. I'm sure they gave him water, let him use the bathroom, too.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, how do you?
SPEAKER_02:Um but so they grilled this guy for a good 24 hours. Um, he's taken to the station.
SPEAKER_00:And by the way, the other newspaper, the dramatic one, said it was 48 hours.
SPEAKER_02:Well, I mean, when you do murder investigations, there is the first 48 where you're working the case, you know, because that's the best time that you have to catch uh uh a murderer. I remember uh the the first, the one and only murder case that I worked as a uh the second on a homicide in the 90s. Uh yeah, we worked that thing for two days straight, first 48 hours. And uh I think by the middle of the third day we had all our bad guys in custody and knew the whole story. So um, yeah, that's I mean, that's not not that's not uncommon again that they're working this case straight through. They're grilling this guy. Um, obviously they think he's a good suspect, otherwise they wouldn't have worked on him so long. But count this guy's lucky stars because someone shows up at the 11th hour to get him off the hook.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, wifey.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, wifey.
SPEAKER_00:Wifey shows up at the station and says, Not my man. He was home with me all night. Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:I think wifey saw dollar signs leaving her uh bank account if you knew what I mean. Uh her uh her meal ticket was about to get hauled off to the clink, and uh old wifey uh wasn't gonna let a good commodity like that go. So it wouldn't surprise me if Wifey concocted a story real fast to get hubby off the hook. Yeah. Um I know that if I'd been one of those detectives, I would have looked at Wifey funny and uh brought Wifey in for a little extra questioning.
SPEAKER_00:Right.
SPEAKER_02:You know.
SPEAKER_00:They really are nicer to women, though.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and then and clearly believed in everything they said right away, because they literally let this guy go just on her word. Oh yeah, okay, bye.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, well, I mean, would they have had justification to start grilling this woman now?
SPEAKER_02:I mean, you gotta check her story out. Are you sure he was with you? What were you guys doing? Where were you? I mean, given that I was like, would he have been questioned her shamed?
SPEAKER_00:Would the police have been socially shamed in 1925 for like sweating this woman also?
SPEAKER_02:I'm not saying they gotta do the same thing that they did to him, but I mean they should have at least, you know, asked her some questions. Where were you guys? What were you doing? Is there anybody that can corroborate your story? You know, I would have maybe dug a little deeper. But like I said, in 1925, this is depression era, you know, America, we're heading into, like I said, uh husband's a commodity, and you know, it's not a stretch of the imagination uh that a uh woman in her position is going to, you know, come to her man's defense and try to keep him out of prison or jail.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So that is what happens. It doesn't seem like the second man is located and the case kind of falls off from here. So I'm guessing, and see if you agree with me, I am guessing that the police just didn't have anything else to go on, any other leads. They kind of hit a dead end with the wife, and there was just no more they could do.
SPEAKER_02:And that happens. I mean, sometimes you work a case as as long as you we and we still have unsolved murders in past modern time murders, like from the 90s and 2000s. So you don't solve them all. Um, this case obviously was uh real tough. You know, they didn't have surveillance cameras back in these days, you couldn't check the tapes for the hallway. I mean, no, um, you know, the population wasn't as large, people weren't as you know curious. I mean, if you had heard moans and screams in a little tight building today, everybody would have bounced either apartments, you know, checking to see what was going on and stuff, but you know, maybe not in 1925, at least not the Vandervoort in Pasadena. Um, so the police didn't have a lot else to go on. Um, you know, the the little tool that hit a dead end, you know, uh they couldn't crack this, they couldn't break this guy in the 24 hours they grilled him. No other wits came forward. You know, murder cases are made by eyewitnesses. No. Um so in reality, I mean, this thing just became an unsolved murder.
SPEAKER_00:And it seems as though the police were not buying this robbery motive, just like you are not. And the newspapers leave it at the detectives, all think it improbable that Colburn was just left to die there in bed while the thieves ransacked his room for all the reasons that we have discussed.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I agree with that. Um, like I say, my take, my final analysis is kind of a weird sexual thing gone bad, and maybe they did or didn't mean to kill him, but he died, and they're in the wind, the two guys, and like I said, they didn't really steal anything, they didn't take anything from this guy, so I don't see the whole robbery thing.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Um but anyway, yeah, it's one of those mysteries that just will remain a mystery, you know.
SPEAKER_00:And I will forever wonder if when I was 12 years old I put my sleeping bag down right where Lucius Colbert was murdered. I'll never know.
SPEAKER_02:Could have been. Yeah. Yeah. So uh yeah, another one of uh our episodes about an unsolved Pasadena PD murder.
SPEAKER_00:Yep. And we will be back next week with another little old murder from Pasadena.