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
The Mysterious Murder of Martin Telles
Pasadena Police and LA County Sheriff's Detectives investigate the 1922 murder of 17-year-old Martin Telles, found bludgeoned in a reservoir at the Glenarm Power Plant.
And we are back with another little old murder from Pasadena. I'm the historian Alyse and I'm here with...
Victor:Victor Cass, retired police sergeant with over 30 years experience, all with the Pasadena, California Police Department.
Alyse:And today, we do come with a story from the roaring 20s, as we promised last week. This is from 1922.
Victor:Yes, and I think that a lot of our... listeners, especially those from Pasadena, will be interested in where this takes place.
Alyse:Yeah, so this takes place at the Glenarm Power Plant, but it was called something different back then, I think.
Victor:t Yeah, but I mean... People who know the Pasadena area well, this is a power plant that still exists today. It's a large facility on our southern border between Pasadena and South Pasadena. It's bordered by...
Alyse:It's right next to Blair High School.
Victor:And the Metro A-Line train. Yeah, interesting place. And Alyse I think you have some family Connection.
Alyse:I do. Okay, my great-grandma's... Father. So my great-great-grandfather worked on that big fancy art deco fountain that's out front. I think this was one of the first electric fountains that was built, by the way.
Victor:This plant is also unique because it gives Pasadena its own power source. So we're not tied into any of Edison's, any of the state's grid system. And those of us who are old enough to remember the Y2K drama on the eve of the year 2000, everybody was worried that power grids would fail. And we in Pasadena, I remember the police department at the time, we were so much concerned because we knew that Pasadena had its own power grid that could
Alyse:But it's kind of the story of American history at this time for Edison to like try and control everyone else's Inventions and then charge a shit ton of money for it f which is what happened in Pasadena Edison was charging a lot for the power and I guess the service was pretty shitty anyway so Pasadena residents decided to pass a bond to build their own power plant.
Victor:Forget this, I'm not paying. We're going to get our own power plant.
Alyse:Yeah. So it was built... I think it was opened on the 4th of July, 1907.
Victor:Yeah, it's been in operation since. And there was a young man who worked there.
Alyse:Yes, there was. By the way, fun fact, they have used this to film many different things, like Michael Jackson and Janet Jackson filmed music videos there, and they filmed Nightmare on Elm and Criminal Minds. Yes, so what's not fun is what happened to poor Martin Tellez, who was only 17. In 1922.
Victor:I guess his family lived near the plant?
Alyse:I'm not sure if they lived near the plant or if they lived in L.A. at the time. The newspapers say kind of two different things. But he did work at the plant. They had a steam condensing reservoir for...
Victor:Well, yeah, these power plants, they generate steam to turn the turbine, but the water has to go somewhere, and it fills these pools, basically. And in 1922, I guess, young Martin Telles started his day a couple of days before, or how long before?
Alyse:So on March 4th, he left. His mom gave him $1.50. to go get a haircut and then to go watch a moving picture. They didn't even call them movies back then. They were movie pictures.
Victor:$1.50 can get you a lot of stuff back in 1922, apparently. And young 17-year-old Martin wanted to have a little day outing on his own. Who knows where he was going or who he was going to meet. But... He never came home.
Alyse:Yeah, that's just the thing. He went off and we don't know where he went. He went missing for like two weeks.
Victor:Something like that, yeah.
Alyse:He was missing. And so the next day, well, that night that he's missing... You know, they call the police and let the police know that he hasn't come home. And the dad goes around that night and the next day searching everywhere, like at the railroad depots, at the power plant. He even goes and looks inside that steam condenser reservoir, doesn't see his son. He's looking everywhere and cannot find him
Victor:h Right. The initial report that the family made was to the Pasadena Police Department, you know, Obviously, who knows what efforts they had put into it or what searches they had made. But Pasadena officers were obviously unable to locate young Martin at this time. And then where does this interesting story go from there?
Alyse:So Martin's dad, Savano, was walking around the streets of Pasadena several days after his son went missing. And he approaches this man who's walking down the street and he asks him for the time. And he pulls out a gold pocket watch. And Sevano is like, that is my son's pocket watch. And now that I look at you, the clothes that you're wearing are my son's clothes.
Victor:Yeah, so this stranger who he just asked for the time has all of his missing son's property. I mean, again, this gold pocket watch, the clothing. He has no idea who this guy is. And who knows if he confronts him at that moment. He may or may not have like...
Alyse:Yeah, I'm not sure what that confrontation looked like. But we do know that he goes home and he tells his wife.
Victor:Right.
Alyse:And his wife... for whatever reason, doesn't go to Pasadena police. She goes to the LA district attorney.
Victor:Yeah, that's kind of unusual. Who knows how the wife even knew to go to the DA's office. But she goes to the DA's office with this new information. Hey, my husband saw this guy. He has our Missy and son's pocket watch. He has his clothes. And so the DA's office, being a county office, they go to their own police force, which is the the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, and they get Deputy Sheriffs Reyes and Sepulveda on the case.
Alyse:And so they go and they arrest this man who ends up being 35-year-old Esiderio, his name is kind of spelled differently in different articles, might be Esiderio Moreno. As I said, he's 35 years old. He's supposedly the head of his family, And he lives right next to the power plant.
Victor:He doesn't live too far from there. The deputy sheriffs, you know, in their investigation, come to find out that his wife had washed the blood off of young Martin's clothes before old Desiderio was seen walking around in his outfit.
Alyse:Yes.
Victor:Which doesn't look good.
Alyse:No, not at all.
Victor:You're wearing the clothes. He got his bohat. Your wife scrubbed the blood out of these clothes. What's going on, buddy?
Alyse:And so I think just the fact that he lived so close to the power plant where Martin worked led them to probably do another search of that reservoir. And that is where they end up finding poor Martin in the reservoir. If you remember, the dad looked in there, but there was... a northern area of that tank that was like nine feet deep.
Victor:Yeah, it's a little deeper. I mean, this water's dark. You know, these reservoirs, I mean, anybody who's ever seen one of these types of reservoirs in any kind of canyon or bay and dam or reservoir facility, the water's sometimes dark. They sometimes have dark bottoms of these areas. It could be hard to see somebody who was deep under the water. But yes, they find the deceased Martin Telles inside the reservoir.
Alyse:And he's nude.
Victor:Yes. He's nude and his face has all the evidence of having been bludgeoned.
Alyse:Yeah. They say that he was struck on his face and head by a blunt instrument, and his mouth, particularly, was very bruised.
Victor:Yes. Obviously, the deputies are going to interview people at the plant, in the area, to get any witness statements. You know, hey, did you see this kid here? What was he doing? But they weren't really able to get a lot of good information. And kind of... you know, on any kind of, like, suspicious death, you know, they're going to call the L.A. County Coroner's Office to come, and in this case, it was Coroner Nance. And, of course, they also have to notify a funeral home to handle the remains. And this is where the story, especially for purposes of our podcast, gets a little interesting.
Alyse:You know, I was wondering when this would happen. I was thinking, like, it's only a matter of time before we do a case and the body is taken to... LAMB mortuary, and this is what happened. Poor Martin was taken to... It wasn't even... I think the building itself on Orange Grove was put there years later... 1929, so sometime later in that decade. But at the time, they were just... C.F. Lamb and son undertaking. This is
Victor:This is the patriarch and founder of Lamb Funeral Home, where poor Martin's remains are taken. Those of the listeners who have been following our podcast know that we did an episode on the Lamb Funeral Home and all of that notorious history with true crime in Pasadena. But,
Alyse:you know, it... We were talking about that documentary, yeah, The Mortician. A
Victor:As we found out from the documentary, David Sconce learned this from his parents
Alyse:Yeah, yeah, it wasn't something that he had just come up with himself. It went back to, like, Lawrence Lamb. I think they were even hinting that.
Victor:It goes back to the founders. So who knows if poor Martin Telles is what's one of the ones that they mass cremated and did their deeds with. You can only speculate how. How far back the Lamb slash Sconce family was doing this heinous business. I know. So that's a little side note to this.
Alyse:I hope not. Like, enough bad things have happened to this poor boy. Yeah. But yeah, that was crazy. They took him to Lamb. Yeah. What a place to go.
Victor:Yeah, so they're continuing their investigation. And
Alyse:there's also, like, this weird story that happens with Martin's family. Yeah,
Victor:the dad, right?
Alyse:Yeah, the dad. Okay, on Fair Oaks and Pico, which is where you say that Trader Joe's is.
Victor:Well, Trader Joe's is on Pico, but on the Royal Parkway side, so you're getting closer to Huntington Hospital, where Huntington is today. But yeah, so Pico, I think, would be today, Fair Oaks and Pico, where the Burger King is on the corner.
Alyse:Okay.
Victor:So right there, that intersection, there was like a restaurant?
Alyse:It must, yeah, like a saloon or a bar or something like that. Because there's this man, Paul Lee Harris, decides it's a great idea to just like fire his gun in the air. Or I don't know if he was trying to scare the uncle of Martin Tejas. And his dad, Sivano, was there during this event and I guess saw this Harris fire in the air threateningly at the uncle of Martin. And so they went and charged him with assault with a deadly weapon. I don't know what came of that. Who
Victor:knows? Maybe Martin's dad was there drinking, trying to drown out his sorrows for his missing and deceased boy or who knows what. But yeah, kind of odd little side story. I also wanted to point out that even though Los Angeles County Sheriff's deputies are on this case, they are being assisted by the Pasadena Police Department. And Pasadena PD has Detective Sergeant Stanley Decker and P.J. McNulty helping out the sheriff detectives
Alyse:so by the end of March the end of this month Moreno is charged with murder in LA court and his story is a little ridiculous he says that he basically found the clothes
Victor:well it's not his first story because then another story in murders where his son found the clothes and gave it to him
Alyse:h Yeah. And so I don't know if that's a discrepancy in like what he was saying or just in the newspapers themselves.
Victor:And it gets a little murkier and odder because when the investigators are conducting their murder investigation and they're interviewing, you know, what they call quote-unquote local Mexicans, obviously the Hispanic community in this area is going to have, you know, maybe something to say about this. It comes to light that one of the workers says that Tejas was found inside that tank were in swim trunks and that a towel a bathing towel and soap was also found uh in the water and that his clothes were found folded outside the tank as if young tas was there to go for a swim
Alyse:yeah and
Victor:died in the reservoir
Alyse:right and so then moreno's tail becomes Oh, my son, my young son, Tomasio, I think his name was, was walking home from school and saw these clothes and just decided to take them home. And when he got home, he said someone gave the clothes to him as a gift.
Victor:Yes, walking home from school through this power plant and past this reservoir, you know. So that's a little shady.
Alyse:But... the strangest thing of this all is not like his bizarre tale of like oh i just found the clothes and that my wife washed the blood out of it's the fact that they they declared him innocent
Victor:Sounds like a typical Los Angeles jury, if you know what I mean
Alyse:What happened? But this is not typical for the time. They're usually very eager to...
Victor:A couple of our cases I remember in our podcast, these people were getting off cut frequently. I guess so. Yeah, I mean, who knows if the evidence wasn't that great or they just didn't find enough information, you know, but whether this guy Moreno was the killer... of young Martin or not, or, I mean, Alyse and I were talking about this case. We can only speculate as to what possibly could have happened. I mean, yes, could Martin Telles have gone to that? He worked there, so he's familiar with the grounds. Could he have gone after his haircut in the movie to go for a swim?
Alyse:I mean, maybe. Yeah, maybe he just got a haircut. Why not, like, get all nice and clean? You never know. Y
Victor:You never know. I mean, could Martin Taiz have known this guy Moreno? And they met up there for something? Maybe.
Alyse:And my other question, and I didn't get to find this guy, but I was trying to look up Tomasio, the young son of Moreno, wondering if maybe he's actually the same age as Tejas, who was only 17. T
Victor:They got into some little scrape, or there was bad blood, or... I mean, there's so many theories that you're going to throw out regarding this case. You know, could it have been like... you know, some relationship gone bad. I mean, we talked about robbery being a motive, and Martin Telles didn't have any money on him. He just has his gold watch and his
Alyse:clothing.
Victor:You'd have to know that this kid, I guarantee you he wasn't murdered somewhere else, and then someone walked down Fair Oaks with the body and went to the reservoir and dumped him there. This happened either right there at the reservoir or really close to the reservoir, where he was beaten to death for who knows what reason, and then dumped in that reservoir to hide the body, and then they take his clothes and the watch.
Alyse:Yeah.
Victor:So, again, lots of different things
Alyse:things. And I'm pretty sure it happened there at the reservoir
Victor:At the reservoir, for sure. You know, he didn't drown, because you're not going to go in swimming and panic and drown and have a bludgeoned face.
Alyse:Yeah, and it also seemed, the way they described the wounds, it was too much to be like, oh, he fell and hit his head. It really sounded like he was beaten and murdered.
Victor:Yeah, for sure
Alyse:And plus, the blood all over his clothes. How did the blood get on his clothes if he was naked in the tank.
Victor:I'm pretty sure this guy was bludgeoned to death with his clothing still on him.
Alyse:Yeah.
Victor:Stripped, dumped in the tank and whoever murdered him kept the clothing and the watch and like called it a day. Could it have been Moreno? It could have been Moreno. Could it have been his son if his son was a little older than Martin's age? Could it have been both of them, the son and the dad together? Yeah. Who knows?
Alyse:We also have so little information. Like, if this was a white dude that was killed, we would have so many more details of this. But we really don't know.
Victor:Yeah even though there were some articles, some significant articles in a lot of papers from around the country. One paper in Texas had an article about this story because it was so bizarre.
Alyse:Yeah, but... It was like the AP, it was the same article that they just ran across. So it really could have been anyone.
Victor:It could have been anyone. It could have been the guys that they figured for it, and they just got off because they just didn't have enough evidence against them. Always a case in this situation. You know, the power plant down there, it's kind of isolated. There aren't going to be a lot of eyewitnesses, and as we know, eyewitnesses make murder cases. So, yeah. One of those really bizarre, unsolved... Murders from past history,
Alyse:right? Yeah, bet you never knew that there was a murder at the power plant reservoir, huh?
Victor:Yeah. I'm sure that next time one of our listeners is driving past that plant on Glenarm, they're going to think a little differently about it.
Alyse:I look at Pasadena very differently since starting this podcast. I'm like, oh, there was a murder there. There was a murder there.
Victor:Yeah, I mean, every different neighborhood you can imagine. It's not all the same area. And I know that this podcast, normally we release our new episodes on Friday. We're a little late. In fact, one of my listener friends was like, hey, I'm looking forward to your podcast. I was like, what happened?
Alyse:We are sorry. We were very overwhelmed
Victor:yesterday. We're going to post this morning with this and get back on this and we will return to our regular Friday podcast. new episode dropping schedule.
Alyse:Yes. And we will be back with another little murder from Pasadena next Friday.