But Was it Murder?

In 1930, a bizarre report of a murder at an East Pasadena mansion leads Los Angeles County Sheriff's investigators to uncover the truth behind the suicide of a prominent doctor. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:25

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_03 0:32

Victor Cass, a retired police sergeant with over 30 years experience all with the Pasadena, California Police Department.

SPEAKER_00 0:40

And we come to you with a bizarre tale from 1930.

SPEAKER_03 0:47

Yes, Elise uh dipped back into the archives on this one and found a case which uh interestingly enough has a parallel from recent history, but we'll get into that a little bit later.

SPEAKER_00 0:58

Yes. So this concerns a Dr. Henry Woodhouse. He was born in Ontario, Canada. Uh, and then he moved to the US. He became a uh pretty well-known doctor in Philadelphia, and then ended up moving to Pasadena at the turn of the century, and he was like done doing his doctor thing. He was retired, he just wanted to like hang out with his orange groves because you know that's what you do when you move to Pasadena.

SPEAKER_03 1:35

At the turn of the 19th twin.

SPEAKER_00 1:36

If you have an orange grove.

SPEAKER_03 1:38

Yes. Uh he was 79 years old at the time, correct?

SPEAKER_00 1:42

Yeah, uh-huh.

SPEAKER_03 1:43

Uh, and lived uh in East Pasadena, um, I think off San Pascual Street.

SPEAKER_00 1:49

Yeah. Um, some of the newspapers say it's San Marino, but today it is Pasadena.

SPEAKER_03 1:56

Well, yeah, the border down there, for our listeners who are familiar with like a map of Pasadena, uh, down near California Boulevard and San Pascual in the east part of town, the border is very jagged and kind of gerrymandered. So there are segments of those streets that are in Pasadena and then for a block or two in San Marino, and then it goes back to Pasadena again. So it is unusual our southern border down there in the east part of town.

SPEAKER_00 2:21

Yeah. So it will be referred to as San Marino, sometimes as La Monda Park.

SPEAKER_03 2:26

Right. It's it would be yeah, it would be near the Lamonda Park neighborhood of Pasadena. Um, but yeah, it's basically on the border with Pasadena and San Marino.

SPEAKER_00 2:35

And so this house is still there. It's a beautiful house, and it honestly looks like it should be surrounded by a whole bunch of orange groves. And like if you look him up in the census, Dr. Woodhouse, he lists himself as a farmer, and then to specify it says orange groves. So he is like living his farmer life here in Pasadena. And for about 35 years, he's lived in this ranch home there. And he is getting older, like you said. He's like 79 at this point, and his health is starting to fail him. So he goes to live with his neighbor. Some people said that it was his sister, but I haven't clarified that. Her name was Ida Allen. Um, and so it was like the past half a year before he died, he was living with her, but he loved his home on San Pascual so much that he would make a visit to the home every single day to sort of like check it out, make sure nothing bad was happening, maybe like take a bath or something while he was there.

SPEAKER_03 3:48

Right. Yes, this ill health had been going on for some time. Heart ailments, I believe.

SPEAKER_00 3:53

Mm-hmm. So on April 5th of 1930, uh, Dr. Woodhouse goes to his home on San Pascual, and you know, he tells Ida Allen what he's doing. But he takes a very long time, and then uh Mrs. Allen starts to freak out and worry that something has happened to him. So she calls up his brother Charles.

SPEAKER_03 4:23

Yes, Charles J. Woodhouse, age 75, his younger brother.

SPEAKER_00 4:29

Younger, but they're still uh two older gentlemen. Right. Um he goes to the home and finds his brother dead on the floor in his upstairs bedroom.

SPEAKER_03 4:44

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 4:46

And so they call I think it's because it's in that weird, uh, weird area that you're talking about. It's the temple city sheriffs that show up to investigate.

SPEAKER_03 4:57

Yes, Los Angeles County sheriffs from the temple station uh show up to investigate this body, um, there is a little uh gash, a little blood near the head uh that deputies just kind of attribute it to the fall.

SPEAKER_00 5:15

Yeah. They think that when he, first of all, because of all of his health issues, they assume that he had a heart attack.

SPEAKER_02 5:23

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 5:23

And when he fell, he hit his head on something, and that's what the small amount of blood was.

SPEAKER_03 5:31

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 5:31

Um, so they end up taking him away to Turner and Stevens funeral parlor, um, where they get ready to do the autopsy. But you know, the interesting thing, Temple Sheriffs got the call at like 8 30 p.m. that night, and they're told that there was a murder committed at San Pascual. Um, but yet when they go there, they see this old man, like f they think it's just like natural causes. They think he just had a heart attack. They can't see any signs of um like someone breaking and entering or like any evidence that someone had tried to kill him, right?

SPEAKER_03 6:16

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 6:17

So they go to do the autopsy, and the coroner calls up the sheriffs and is like, hey, uh, did you know this guy has two bullet holes in his body? And at that point the sheriffs are like okay, this might be a murder.

SPEAKER_03 6:41

Right. Um the first bullet hole that they found was in his chest, the second in his head.

SPEAKER_00 6:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 6:52

Uh it would be very suspicious, obviously, for investigating officers. Um, obviously they're gonna think murder, they're gonna think some kind of criminal acts. Um, it's not your typical suicide. There was no gun.

SPEAKER_00 7:06

Yeah. Like, what do you mean? There are two bullet holes in this guy, but there's no gun around at the scene. Right. So they start this uh homicide investigation.

SPEAKER_03 7:18

Yes, obviously, they're going to uh interview uh pointedly all the people involved in finding this body. In other words, the brother.

SPEAKER_00 7:30

Yes. Um, and like they even had like this whole fingerprint squad that was sent in and stuff too, like they were really taking this seriously. But yeah, they go and they talk to the brother, and then um talking to the brother things start to unravel. Unravel pretty quickly, the uh story comes out.

SPEAKER_03 7:50

Yeah, so investigators come to find out that uh upon discovering the body, uh old younger brother there did not call the police right away. In fact, he called somebody else first.

SPEAKER_00 8:06

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 8:08

He called a trusted religious figure in the family, Reverend Marshall Hayes.

SPEAKER_00 8:16

Yeah, and he was a friend of Dr. Woodhouse's for like almost since he got to Pasadena, like 35 years before. So Charles he goes and, you know, he finds his brother's body lying at the foot of his bed, and he goes and gets this Reverend Hayes and brings him to the body and shows him. And Hayes later tells the sheriffs that he noticed that Charles had a gun in his pocket, and um, you know, he's telling him, like, you should just put the gun back where you found it.

SPEAKER_03 8:55

Yes, the uh the Reverend finds out that Charles had found the gun next to his brother's body and hid it on purpose so that the poor family wouldn't be exposed to the trauma and scandal of their patriarch having committed suicide.

SPEAKER_00 9:18

Yes. He didn't want the shame for their family, and he didn't want Dr. Woodhouse had a son, Edwin, and a daughter, Elizabeth. Um, he didn't want them to go through that shock and pain of knowing that their father had shot themselves. Yes. So he stuck this uh 22 caliber revolver into his pocket, and so Hayes convinces him, like, you know, just put it back exactly where you found it, you know, we'll uh let law enforcement know. And so he thinks that he did.

SPEAKER_03 9:53

Right. But come to find out after the old Reverend left.

SPEAKER_00 9:59

Charles snuck back into the home, back into the room, and took that gun away.

SPEAKER_03 10:06

Yes, he was dead set on uh keeping this story out of the papers that it was a suicide.

SPEAKER_00 10:12

Yeah, and I don't know what this old man was thinking, but like he's just I'm gonna stay quiet, and he stays quiet up until like the sheriff's knock on his door, like, hey, we found bullet holes in your brother. You know, obviously these things are gonna come out. I don't know what he was thinking.

SPEAKER_03 10:29

It's at that time that Charles cops out to okay, this is what happened. Yeah, I hid the gun. Which, if I was an investigating officer, the detective, I would be very upset about this because hey, buddy, when you lied about this, what else are you lying about? Like, you know, just in I was talking to Elise about this, just in reading the the details of this case. How do we know the brother didn't murder this dude?

SPEAKER_00 10:57

It was very weird, his behavior that, like, and why is he gonna call his friend to come? I understand that he's shocked, and you know, he doesn't want people to find out about his brother killing himself. Obviously, it's not an ideal situation, but like logically thinking, you have to know like the sheriffs are gonna get called, they're gonna show up and like they're gonna find these bullets in the body.

SPEAKER_03 11:24

And in my experience, uh people also sometimes call a reverend when they feel guilty and they might want to confess something.

SPEAKER_00 11:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:34

And maybe he chickened out into confessing something.

SPEAKER_00 11:37

That's an interesting taste.

SPEAKER_03 11:39

He killed his brother and decided to just stick with the old suicide story.

SPEAKER_00 11:45

Maybe.

SPEAKER_03 11:46

You know. Um, did could the brother have had a motive? A nice big ranch farm uh on the south end of Pasadena with orange groves?

SPEAKER_00 11:55

Right, but would he have gotten it? I think his children would have gotten it.

SPEAKER_03 11:59

Yeah, most likely, but you never know where there was money involved. You never know what the motivation was. Suicide, yeah, could have been a suicide. Murder, I mean, maybe.

SPEAKER_00 12:09

Yeah. I mean, Dr. Woodhouse was very wealthy. His home on San Pascual was like nine acres, and they said it was worth at the time $72,000.

SPEAKER_03 12:21

Which in today's money is a lot of dough.

SPEAKER_00 12:23

Yeah, that was 1930.

SPEAKER_03 12:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:26

Um, yeah, he was worth a lot. His, you know, they were kind of a prominent family. The daughter, Elizabeth, she was working at the Pasadena Library for a while, and then she went to work at the New York Public Library, and then the son was a professor at Stanford University, I think for botany or biology or something like that.

SPEAKER_02 12:48

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 12:48

Um, but they talked to the children, you know, all of his uh family members, and the kids tell the uh sheriffs how his health had been failing, he was having heart troubles, he was also kicked by a horse like two decades before. Yeah, so there's the whole the kind of He was in near constant pain is what they were saying.

SPEAKER_03 13:13

And come to find out that he also had some unusual ideas about what uh older gentlemen in his health situation in pain uh should do.

SPEAKER_00 13:26

Yeah. He had the idea that like old sick people, as with animals, should kind of just be put out of their misery.

SPEAKER_03 13:42

Euthanized, yes, so to speak. Um, which does, of course, speak to the suicide theory.

SPEAKER_01 13:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 13:49

Uh and and lends credence to the fact that the old guy probably did take his life, but it is a bizarre uh personal philosophy to think that you should just, you know, euthanize yourself if uh he was a weird kind of guy, though.

SPEAKER_00 14:05

Um they said that he put himself through Jefferson Medical College, and that you know, that's how he got the degree of the Doctor of Medicine in 1889. And he, when he came to Pasadena, he they said was a loyal Pasadena and like went to every single rose parade that there was, and he was affiliated with the local Theosophical Society.

SPEAKER_03 14:33

Right.

SPEAKER_00 14:34

What's the Theosophical Society?

SPEAKER_03 14:36

Pasadena had many clubs uh since our founding Shakespeare Club, Women's Club, today clubs like the University Club, a Theosophical Society was just one of those other kind of intellectual, literary, social clubs that Pasadena had um at the time. I'm not sure if it still exists today, possibly.

SPEAKER_00 14:57

Um and he was also an active member of the Universalist Church, which is still exists.

SPEAKER_03 15:04

Yeah. Interesting about this case, the people who found the bullet holes were the morticians. Now I know what our listeners might be thinking is this another lamb funeral home? Turner and Stevens. It's Turner and Stevens. But but it's interesting that the morticians found the bullet holes because just in my own career, uh several years back, it just recently in recent history, uh, we had a similar case where an old guy found on the ground.

SPEAKER_01 15:36

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03 15:36

There's a little bit of blood, officers at the time thought he'd hit his head.

SPEAKER_01 15:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 15:41

And they called the uh funeral home.

unknown 15:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 15:46

Funeral home collects the body, calls Pasadena PD shortly after it says, Hey, there's a bullet hole in this guy's head. Every sergeant's nightmare, take it from me. Um and one of the reasons why we tell our officers to man check the body out first, do your due diligence.

SPEAKER_00 16:01

Why, because then there's like a murder scene that you haven't investigated.

SPEAKER_03 16:04

Well, that, or you know, uh in this case, just like the case we're talking about now, it turns out the guy did commit suicide, and when he shot himself, the small caliber handgun landed on the floor and bounced into an open boot, a shoe nearby by the closet. And that's why officers did not realize it was suicide. They did not find the gun.

SPEAKER_00 16:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 16:25

Because it had landed hidden.

SPEAKER_00 16:27

That is so similar to what happened to Dr. Woodhouse.

SPEAKER_03 16:31

Yes. Um, again, do your due diligence, those young officers that are listening, make sure you check the body out and look carefully around for possible guns. Yeah. And a possible suicide scenario.

SPEAKER_00 16:44

So there was a weird thing I wanted to ask what you think about this. The Pasadena Post said that he had, quote, often admonished his brother to turn off the ignition in his automobile should anything happen to him while driving.

SPEAKER_03 17:02

I mean, he's probably thinking of the fact that he has heart ailments and his old ticker could stop being at any moment, especially if he's behind the wheel and just, hey, make sure I don't crash anything, the car doesn't roll off by itself, turn off the ignition.

SPEAKER_00 17:14

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_03 17:15

You know.

SPEAKER_00 17:15

Because I get the feeling that he was recently told like some sort of health diagnosis, like told that he doesn't have long to live, or that there's something seriously wrong with him.

SPEAKER_03 17:29

Could be. I mean, like I said, I mean, obviously we brought up the issue that, you know, it could have been murder, but it was most likely suicide. And, you know, as you talked about his weird ideas about just crawling off to go die, you know, and euthanizing yourself, um, you know, I probably believe that that was the best option for him is to just kill himself.

SPEAKER_00 17:52

Yeah, I think you're right. So the sad part about this is that they do like an an inquest into the death, and they have the son Edwin come on the stand, and he's talking about his dad's beliefs about like old and sick people, and how um he his dad had recently went to visit him in Palo Alto in January, and he asked his son, wouldn't it be better if I were out of the way?

SPEAKER_02 18:24

Hmm.

SPEAKER_00 18:26

And so that's the saddest part of this is the son's response because he told his dad that I needed him and would always need him.

SPEAKER_03 18:36

Yes. No child wants to hear their parents ask if they'd be better out of the way, at least not from good families.

SPEAKER_00 18:43

No, and it's just so sad, like he'd rather have his dad, you know.

SPEAKER_03 18:47

Yeah, of course. We would all rather, you know, our parents can't be around forever, and those of us who've lost uh a parent like myself, you do feel the void in your life.

SPEAKER_02 18:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 18:57

Um but yeah, it's it was a kind of a bizarre case, a sad end to a long life that uh you know ended up bringing some minor scandal to the family anyway, despite their best efforts to try to hide it.

SPEAKER_00 19:15

Yeah. It it does m match uh the suicide theory, you know. He had clearly been thinking about killing himself for a while. He probably did just, you know, go back to his home that he had lived in for so many years with his precious orange groves and went up to his bedroom and shot himself in the chest, and unfortunately, that didn't kill him, so he shot himself in the head.

SPEAKER_03 19:44

Yeah. Very sad. Most suicides most of the time don't generate these kind of homicide investigations. Every once in a while, they're so bizarre that they do. I mean, usually even today, like when I was a supervisor, I mean, we definitely like if if a suicide looked unusual, we'd, you know, notify our homicide guys just to come get eyes on and you know.

SPEAKER_00 20:09

Well, remember the original call they got was there has been a murder at San Pasco.

SPEAKER_03 20:13

Yeah, so it came out like that. But um, yeah. Pizza case, we don't do a lot of these just suicide cases on this podcast, but because of the suspected murder element, uh, I know that you thought it was kind of fitting for the episode.

SPEAKER_00 20:29

Yeah. Um there was a murder investigation and everything.

SPEAKER_03 20:32

Yeah, yeah. So little little interesting piece of uh older Pasadena history and um I think we're going to Palo Alto uh a little bit, a couple months here, aren't we? Up to Stanford.

SPEAKER_00 20:46

I have to oh get to watch another football game.

SPEAKER_03 20:50

The Notre Dame game I'm gonna drag you to. Yes. Um, so I guess now I'll have to come up with a more modern case for our next episode.

SPEAKER_00 20:59

Yeah, you will. So think about it, and we will be back next week with another little old murder from Pasadena.