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 Chef Shot the Chauffeur
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Pasadena Police investigate the bizarre 1921 murder-suicide committed by the Chinese chef of a prominent Pasadena family near "Millionaire's Row."
And we are back with another Little Old Murder from Pasadena. I'm the historian Elise, and I'm here with my co-host.
SPEAKER_00:Victor Cass, retired police sergeant with over 30 years' experience all with the Pasadena, California Police Department.
SPEAKER_02:And we are going back to the Roaring 20s today. Uh specifically September 7th of 1921. And this murder took place at 215 Palmetto Drive, which I believe is no longer there, but the neighborhood is still there.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, Palmetto is a street uh just off of our uh South Orange Grove, uh the old Millionaire's Row part of Pasadena, a very uh historic and ritzy part of town that back during this time period would have been filled with mansions and wealthy homes, you know, the the heirs of the Gilded Age, as it were.
SPEAKER_02:Mm-hmm. And that is exactly where this murder took place. It was in the big mansion of Clayton H. Harvey. Uh he was born in West Virginia and was a lawyer in San Francisco. He kind of moved around a bunch, but then he eventually retired for good in California in 1908 and lived out the rest of his life there. Fun fact, his great, or he was a great-great-grandson of Alexander Hamilton.
SPEAKER_00:Oh wow. Yeah. And apparently his wife was a very prominent socialite.
SPEAKER_02:Mm-hmm. She was. And this giant house that they lived in was one of those big craftsman ones. It was built in 1905 by Augustus Brandt. And he was one of the big uh architects of Pasadena in the day. He worked with Green and Roerig and Myron Hunt. He built a lot of those bungalows for the Pasadena resort hotels like the Huntington and the Maryland and Vista del Arroyo.
SPEAKER_00:Wow.
SPEAKER_02:Where the old uh or where the federal courthouse is.
SPEAKER_00:Kind of a who's who of Pasadena architecture uh notables.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. So just to give you a feel for where this place is and how ritzy it is.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_02:And so as you were saying, uh Mrs. Garvey was a socialite and she was really, really proud of her chef. She had a Chinese chef that cooked for her, and she was like the envy of all of Pasadena.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, apparently uh Chinese food was hard to come by in these parts amongst Pasadena's more elite, wealthier white population, and I know how much I love Chinese food myself, being a big fan of that cooking, so I can just imagine uh how popular this chef and the dishes served at her house would have been to guests who didn't have access to such rich, wonderful cuisine.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I guess it really was a gift to be invited over to their house to taste some of uh the chef's cooking. The chef was Lim Foon, and they messed with his name a whole bunch in papers, so he's known by many different uh names. But he was born in China and um obviously lived in Pasadena by 1921. He was a veteran of World War One.
SPEAKER_00:That's correct. Um, which would not have been that unusual, although rarer. Uh there were uh Chinese and mixed Chinese soldiers in the AEF uh over in France.
SPEAKER_02:Um yeah, but I think he was the only Chinese guy in his unit or whatever it was.
SPEAKER_00:Possibly, yeah. Let's talk a little bit about this guy and the Chinese community in Pasadena because I think that's an interesting part of this story.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:The Chinese in Pasadena, it's kind of a complicated history. Uh, obviously, some of our uh more historically oriented listeners uh may recall an incident in old Pasadena during the 1880s. It involved the laundry that was uh attacked by a riotous mob and set a fire. Um after that, uh Pasadena's Chinatown relocated kind of in a more south of there, uh in the area of you know Pico and Edmonton Alley today and South Raymond Avenue and South Fair Oaks Avenue, uh farther down, close to where like Huntington Hospital is today, an art center in the biotech corridor, um Art Center South Campus. Um but yeah, there was a uh ran out of town, basically. Basically, I mean they kind of resettled down there, and so there was a lot of anti-Chinese bias, and a lot of these for a lot of these Chinese people that were here in Pasadena, they were mostly men. Um so in the case of Lim Fun, uh he was actually married, and his wife and child were still in China, which was a very common occurrence. You know, intermarriage was illegal for these Chinese men, they were usually segregated in these little enclaves, um, these little Chinatowns like LA's or Pasadena's. Yes. And so for a lot of them, uh, you know, either finding work or gambling or drinking or you know, being isolated from mainstream society was a common occurrence. So for Lim, uh, you know, getting to work and becoming a prominent member of this family would have been a very big deal for him.
SPEAKER_02:Yes. And he, as you were saying, he did live in a sort of Chinatown in Pasadena. Uh he lived on Pico Street, which we mentioned uh several weeks ago when we were talking about the murder of Martin Taeus.
SPEAKER_00:Yes.
SPEAKER_02:That uh barroom fight with his dad and uncle took place on Pico Street there.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Um at the time it was part of, it was actually called and part of San Pascual Street, uh, the far western end. Um later it was renamed Pico, and it was attached to a kind of a Mexican enclave that was there called Sonora Town as well, uh, for our Pasadena history buffs. And that's where the Chinatown was located, kind of in that little area. Uh interesting background on this uh this wealthy family and their uh Chinese chef.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so he lived on Pico Street, but he also had a room at the Garvey Mansion. And, you know, they were a wealthy family, they have several people working for them at the home, including a chauffeur whose name was George B. Ingalls. Uh Ingalls, some reports say that he was only in his 20s, but that does not really tally with the uh the facts. He was probably uh 50 or in his 50s, and he used to be a bookkeeper at the old Grimes restaurant, they say. And then he became a chauffeur for the Garvey family. His wife, Catherine, she lived, they both lived at Las Casitas Court, and she owned a yarn store or worked at a yarn store on East Colorado.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, most of the most of the uh sources that uh that Elise and I have read on this uh very bizarre story have Ingalls as being younger in his uh twenties, um, which is uh kind of unusual if if it's if in fact he was in his fifties. I don't know why they got this this detail wrong.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I think maybe they were confusing his age with Lim Foon's age. Lim Foon, I think, was the younger one, about twenty five. They kept saying of indeterminate age.
SPEAKER_00:Right.
SPEAKER_02:Um, but he was younger in his twenties.
SPEAKER_00:So let's let's examine this. So this case is interesting because it involves our chef, uh huh, Lim Foon, starting to kind of grow jealous of the relationship between the chauffeur and his uh employers. Apparently they really took a liking to uh the chauffeur George Ingalls uh in a way that rubbed Lim the wrong way.
SPEAKER_02:Well, so they say that's what the newspapers say, but do we have any evidence to this? And actually, some of the papers are saying that uh Ingalls and uh Foon got along well. That's right. They were not enemies, they had no troubles, they were friends, and there was no reason for him to uh do what he did on this day.
SPEAKER_00:And and then when you think about it, a chauffeur's duties and a cook or chef's duties, they don't intersect. So Lim Foon could have gone on happily being their beloved chef, and you know, the relationship between the chauffeur and you know the master and mistress wouldn't have really impacted his job or his standing, so we think.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. But there was something interesting going on at the time. On this particular day, Lim Foon went out to Los Angeles to visit some family members. I think he had a cousin, um, a cousin and uh an uncle, but he was there to basically say goodbye to his family in LA to sort out all of his uh passport stuff because he was gonna go back to China.
SPEAKER_00:That's right, he was. He was gonna go back to China to see his wife and child, um, and who knows, maybe stay. I mean, who knows?
SPEAKER_02:Yes, and so some of the reports say that like he was really eager, he had been planning this for a while, was really looking forward to going. Um, and I don't know why he was so so anxious on this particular day, but I feel like it has something to do with he's leaving for China, like the next day.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_02:So he goes to LA and then he comes back home, and at the Garvey Mansion is Mrs. Garvey and Ingalls, the chauffeur, and they are working on the books. He was like a bookkeeper, so I think that he was helping her with accounting doing accounting and that sort of thing. And it was just after 3 p.m. in the afternoon, and the two hear these noises down below, and they think that it's burglars.
SPEAKER_00:That's right.
SPEAKER_02:So they go down to investigate on the way. Mrs. Garvey grabs a revolver and goes downstairs into the main reception area, and as soon as they get down there, Lim Foon basically springs up from behind this armchair.
SPEAKER_00:Let's let's stop there for a second. I want to interrupt and let's talk about Mrs. Harvey grabbing this revolver. And this is always a danger when a homeowner is not familiar with their weapons or firearms. Her revolver was unloaded.
SPEAKER_02:Yes. So a lot of people I don't know if she knew that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Maybe she knew that. She's like, I'm just gonna throw it at his head.
SPEAKER_00:I think she just didn't know how to use her equipment, and um which is a uh She might have just freaked and just didn't know what to do. Don't buy a gun unless you know what to do with it and how to use it properly.
SPEAKER_02:But anyway, she she didn't need to use it. Um because as I said, Lim Foon like comically pops up from behind an armchair.
SPEAKER_00:It's like an ambush.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, like springs up in the air, according to all the newspaper reports, and fires directly at the chauffeur. The bullet goes through like a fleshy part in his forearm.
SPEAKER_00:It hits his arm and it goes through the arm and enters his torso, his chest area.
SPEAKER_02:And kills him immediately.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So he drops dead. Of course, Mrs. Harvey panics. I mean, her her chef just shot the chauffeur, and so she takes off running. Who knows if she thinks she's next?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, she s runs screaming upstairs and calls Pasadena police. Pasadena police sent two officers to the scene.
SPEAKER_00:But by that time, uh in the process of calling, Mrs. Harvey also heard a third gunshot.
SPEAKER_02:So in the meantime, Lim Foon had walked over to his rooms. He lived in the back of the house in a room uh connected to the kitchens. And you know, I don't know exactly what he did in there. No one knows exactly what he did in the city.
SPEAKER_00:One of the articles I read says he sat on the bed and then shot himself in the head, falling to the floor.
SPEAKER_02:So, but here's the thing there were three shots fired down there.
SPEAKER_00:There were, there were some extra shots. So I'm thinking, who knows if he maybe shot through the ceiling hoping it hit her?
SPEAKER_02:One theory, because there was this big there was a dresser and a mirror, and that mirror was shattered. One of the bullets went through the mirror. So one theory was was he standing in front of the mirror and looking at himself and then like shot at that mirror and then tried to shoot himself. But another bullet also went into the ceiling. Right. And the third bullet went down like by the door to the kitchen.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so who knows? He's obviously in some kind of rage. I mean, he's seen red, he just killed the chauffeur. Who knows what's going on with him? At least as in my research, some bizarre theories were put forth, especially by the police department, about him being hopped up on some drugs.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and I don't know if there's really anything to that. Maybe people were like, this story doesn't make any sense. It must be drugs. Yeah. I mean it But I don't Because later on, the Pasadena Post, Pasadena papers say no, Pasadena police do not think that he was on drugs.
SPEAKER_00:They ruled out the drugs, that's right. So who knows if it was a psychotic break? Who knows if he was just in some rage? Um, most of the papers chalk it to a jealous rage toward the chauffeur.
SPEAKER_02:So do you want to tell them what happened when uh officers Harry Thomas and PJ McNulty got to the home?
SPEAKER_00:Well, yeah, the two cops from Passing PD get there.
SPEAKER_02:They couldn't get in through the front. They had to go around to the back to the kitchen and let themselves in. Uh because remember, Ingalls was shot right there in the reception.
SPEAKER_00:Right. Well, they find his body sprawled out on the floor.
SPEAKER_02:Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_00:And of course.
SPEAKER_02:Then they go into Lim Foon's room and find him laying on the floor partially under the bed. Which is odd. I don't know if he somehow rolled under in his floor.
SPEAKER_00:Well, maybe when he shot himself, he fell down and kind of rolled over. And like, you know, but he blew his brains out. So that's like obviously the cops know he's dead there and he's and he shot himself, so he's obviously the suspect.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:That's what they they can put two and two together. Murder, suicide.
SPEAKER_02:And it's interesting because you were talking about Wing Li in uh Pasadena's Chinatown. He was they called him the most notorious Tong member in Pasadena's Chinatown. And I think that he was kind of like a community leader for the Chinese in Pasadena.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Because these Tongs were very important for the Chinese, for the immigrant Chinese. These are kind of uh, you know, I think Westerners kind of uh just kind of lump them as like gangs, uh Chinese gangs traditionally. You know, I've heard uh Chinese in my studies of Chinese culture and the language, I've heard Chinese people talk about the Tongs being the kind of the go-between from the Chinese gangs in China to the United States. But definitely in uh the 1800s in Los Angeles and Pasadena Chinatowns, and at this time, uh the Chinese community would have looked to the Tong members as kind of you know benevolent uh social services, assistance with language and translation, uh helping them navigate you know passport in information between getting back home and not. And so definitely uh he was a prominent figure that maybe the Pasadena police would have known about and maybe even asked to kind of help them.
SPEAKER_02:Because remember, Lim Foon was here in Pasadena on his own, right? His family was back in China. Um he had some family in Los Angeles, but that's where uh Wing Li came in. He went and contacted Lim Fu's uh uncle and cousin in Los Angeles to tell them.
SPEAKER_00:Wing Li would have been the only conduit, really the only realistic way that Pasnia police would be able to reach any next of kin.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Uh, you know, and obviously it's not gonna take long for word to not only get circulated among his relatives here in Los Angeles, but also back in China. Um his family's gonna be, you know, beside themselves at the mysterious death of their family member.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And they uh they kind of they demanded an inquest uh into this.
SPEAKER_02:They did. They requested an inquest and it was denied.
SPEAKER_00:Yes. Uh the pasting PD uh basically told them, no, it's a clear-cut open and shut case of a murder suicide.
SPEAKER_02:So we're not gonna Or to quote them directly, an out and out case of murder and suicide.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, which pretty much means they're not gonna do anything to uh, you know, give them any extra information or dive any deeper into this case.
SPEAKER_02:Yes. Um but the fact that the family was requesting an inquest tells me that they believed it was super weird that he did what he did and very unusual for him. Um and I know I'm not the only one with so many questions about this. None of this makes sense.
SPEAKER_00:None of it. It's a very bizarre case.
SPEAKER_02:If he's just about to go to China the next day, he's so eager to see his wife and kid, why would he ruin all of that out of jealousy?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and it it's a pretty bizarre motive, you know, this idea that uh he was driven insane with jealousy of the chauffeur, you know, quote unquote, as they said, usurping his place as a household favorite. Um it's a very bizarre uh theory. There really isn't any kind of solid evidence to back that up, not by any eyewitnesses that you know he he ever told anybody that he was angry at the chauffeur.
SPEAKER_02:And even if he was jealous or angry at him, what is the motive to kill someone right before you're about to join? Your family in China.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And then kill yourself.
SPEAKER_02:So you're he had a very strong motive to not do any of these things.
SPEAKER_00:Yes. So it it is it does ask more questions than there are answers. And I don't think the Pasadena PD at the time would have been too interested in diving uh uh deeper into this.
SPEAKER_02:Um it's just kind of the way I mean the other LA papers did go on for a while. They were really wanting it to be like a drug thing.
SPEAKER_00:They did, and you know, admittedly, uh the Pasadena PD did have their hands full with opium and drugs and gambling in the small Chinatown in Pasadena at this time and and uh all you know, all throughout the early part of the 1900s. Uh that was a big focus of the Pasadena police efforts in this neighborhood um was busting up the gambling and opium rings and the drug rings. And so there was a lot of drug busts. There were a lot of uh stuff going on down there that occupied the police department's time. So, you know, uh a a bizarre murder suicide in the rich part of town wouldn't have been that interesting to them, um, other than the the case itself. And again, they deemed it closed and open and shut.
SPEAKER_02:So yeah. Another uh weird aspect of this case is I guess at the same time there was a book that came out called Rose Dawn.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, very bizarre, where you know, uh real life mirrors fiction.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and so in this it depicted this Chinese cook who killed a fellow servant out of jealousy. And like hearing that makes me wonder did they just come up with that as the solution for this murder case? Yeah. Just from reading the book?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, because I can't see, I can't see Lim having read the book and says, I'm gonna recreate this for myself.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, no.
SPEAKER_00:Um, it wouldn't surprise me if, you know, one of the Western, you know, white newspaper writers or, you know, police officials uh who are familiar with this book just said, Yeah, just like that book, you know, let's just chalk it up to that and we'll call it a day.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, here's a quote from one LA paper. The tragedy was the result of peculiar oriental psychology and much resembles the novel Rose Dawn.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, the uh the press and and people at that time, they they uh attributed a lot of bizarre things to the mysterious, you know, Chinese immigrant community, which they knew little of. Um uh it was very racist back at this time. You would see things like yellow devils and unusual aspersions cast upon this community. Um again, there was a lot there was a lot of uh anti-Chinese sentiment uh stretching back to the uh railroad days in the eighteen hundreds up until this time period, even.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. And I have another quote from Wing Li. They spoke to him after the shooting, and he told some reporters that he thinks Lin Fu killed himself under this age-old law that demands a payment, a life for a life sort of thing. And that was his sort of explanation for what happened, but still very vague.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:We still don't know.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, there could be something to that. Um, you know, maybe he lost lost himself, shoots the chauffeur, realizes the gravity of what he did, and maybe that's one of the reasons he shoots the image the image of himself in the mirror. Like, how dare I ruin my life and screw this up and screw up my opportunity to go see my wife and kid.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:You know, and so I'm just gonna end it all right now, and I'll let my family in LA pick up the pieces and deliver the bad news.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_00:You know, it's it this is a weird story. Again, you know, we talk about murder cases in Pasadena and how, you know, traditionally, you know, about fifty percent of them are gang related, and the other fifty percent are just bizarre, you know, either domestic or weird stuff like this, weird murder suicides that just have no explanation. And um you could do a whole podcast that's just on the Chinese community uh in Pasadena, let alone downtown Los Angeles, um, because there was so much involved, even in Pasadena, with the police and gambling and rackets and stuff.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so much violence that we're not even touching on in this podcast.
SPEAKER_00:And I think I I think one of our future episodes is gonna involve a very bizarre uh robbery gone bad murder from Pasadena's Chinatown. So stay be on the lookout for that episode in a couple of weeks.
SPEAKER_02:Mm-hmm. So Limphoon, I think they were worried uh for a bit because there were no arrangements made for his funeral, but he was eventually buried at a Chinese cemetery in Los Angeles, and Ingalls had his body cremated, and it is now in a crypt at Hollywood Forever Cemetery.
SPEAKER_00:Why do I see a TikTok video coming down the pike about these two locations?
SPEAKER_02:There might be one. I've been wanting to go to Hollywood Forever.
SPEAKER_00:That's a good cemetery. This was an interesting episode. Um, it was a uh fascinating read, the research that Elise did on this one, and I'll have to come up with something good, more modern case for uh for next week.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Come up with something interesting.
SPEAKER_00:Yes.
SPEAKER_02:And we will be back next week with another Little Old Murder from Pasadena.