Bertha Boronda: the Mistress of Mayhem - A Fun-Sized Felony

Bertha “Bessie” Boronda attacked her husband, Narciso "Frank" Boronda, in the middle of the night in their San Jose home in 1907.

The newspapers called it a violent, deliberate mutilation. The court charged her with mayhem—a crime defined by the destruction of part of the human body.

But no one ever said exactly what she did.

Over time, the story became more specific, more certain... and more sensational.

But, when you go back to the coverage of the case in 1907… that version of the story isn’t quite there.

Transcript

Speaker: 0:00

What do razors, firemen, and bicycles have in common? You're about to find out in this fun-sized felony. Welcome back to Forgotten Felonies. I'm Monica, and this is a fun-sized felony. Before we begin, no felony is ever fun. When I say fun-sized, I mean the story is short, not that the crime itself was light or trivial. If you look up Bertha Boronda today, you'll find a very specific claim repeated over and over again. In fact, it is this claim that caused Olivia to get excited over this case. Long ago, right after our Hans Schmidt series, we were going to use this case for the next episode. At that time, I hadn't come up with the idea. For fun-sized felonies, yet, so there were specific requirements in order for a case to make it on the podcast. And those requirements would be details. Details. I looked up Bertha Boronda, having already read some articles online, and there was next to no coverage of this case. And that specific claim that makes her so famous today, it's not in the newspapers at all. If you recall, I was pretty upset at the end of the Hans Schmidt series because we'd found the true crime book that was written about that case, and we found that it was all fiction. So I vowed to never rely on anyone else's research from that point forward. And if I were to have covered this case using those details, I would be basically repeating a story that someone else told, but without having seen the actual original resource. And so, finding that there was very little coverage and that that big, gigantic detail about this case wasn't even findable in the historical record, I turned and ran. I told Olivia, I can't do it. I'm sorry. Hans Schmidt ruined me. The Hans Schmidt betrayal was just too fresh. Well, the other day, Olivia asked me if I would use this case for the next fun-sized felony since there's not a lot of detail. And I said, sure. But also, I noticed something in newspapers. com. There are no newspapers from San Jose, California. And that's where this case takes place. So luckily, I had met Mike Detweiler when we were covering the Baby John case, and he told me about the California Digital Newspaper Collection Database, otherwise known as the CDNC. Well, I took a look yesterday, and they do have the San Jose newspapers in their database. And that's exactly what I needed. That specific detail that I was looking for though, it's not there. What is there is something else. There's a violent attack, a deliberate mutilation. The papers said that the injury was so severe that her husband might not survive. Doctors testified about the nature of the wound. Witnesses described the blood. The court charged her with mayhem. And that's a crime defined by the removal or destruction of a body part. But nobody ever said exactly what she took. There's a violent attack. There's a deliberate mutilation. The papers said that the injury was so severe that her husband might not survive. Doctors testified about the nature of the wound. Witnesses described the blood. The court charged her with mayhem, a crime defined by the removal or destruction of a body part. But nobody ever said exactly what she took. And so, let's take a walk back in time to the early 1900s. When Frank Baronda and Bertha Zettel got married, it was Christmas Day of 1901. Frank had been married before to a widow with several children, but that marriage was over for about six years by the time he married Bertha. Frank was 38 years old at the time, and Bertha was 23. By May 30, 1907, they were living in San Jose. In fact, they had lived at that residence on San Pedro Street for their entire marriage. It was right next to the firehouse where Frank worked as a captain. He was the captain of the chemical engine company number one. Now, the first 18 months of the marriage, they were lovely, according to Bertha. They were happy and they were in love. But at that year and a half mark, she realized he didn't love her as much and he was spending time with other women. They were sending letters, she said. So Bertha moved to San Francisco without Frank. She left him. And she worked as a saleswoman at the Emporium. Frank repeatedly wrote to her, but he didn't go and visit. He asked her to come back. He really wanted his wife to come back. He also asked her for money because he was in debt and he needed help. So she obliged. After six months apart, Bertha agreed to go back. She went right back to their home on San Pedro Street. Frank's job at the fire station was kind of a bummer, though. He only got to go home two nights per month. However, during the day, he would go home to eat his meals there with Bertha. So she would cook for him. Thank you. They'd eat together, and then he'd go right back to the fire station for the evening and night. Things began to get tense around the Baronda home. Bertha was very jealous. And I mean, she was very, very jealous. She didn't really trust Frank. She was in the habit of dressing in men's clothing, clothes that she got from her brother, and she would stand around at night to watch any comings and goings of Frank. She said that if she were dressed as herself, the firemen would obviously see and recognize her. She needed to look like an inconspicuous man, just—loitering— at night. She did this quite a bit in the first part of 1907. In the weeks leading up to May 30th of that year, Bertha had become convinced that Frank was going to leave her for another woman and run off to Mexico. For two weeks, from the middle of May to May 29th, Frank had become... upset with her. They were constantly arguing and he said that she was causing issues between him and his brother-in-law. So maybe this was someone married to one of his sisters. So he wanted some space from her, and he decided to stay away. Now, she had no idea where he was eating his meals, and now she was obsessed with watching the firehouse. For those two weeks, she was averaging only one or two hours of sleep per night. Frank admits that he left San Jose and went to Oakland, California on May 26th. He says it was so he could pick up a fireman's cap and also to visit his friend Geraldo. He'd paid for a room at a lodging house in Oakland, but then his sister... found out that he was there, and she said, 'No, no, no, you come and stay with us.' So he stayed the night with family, and he returned to San Jose on May 27th. Right back to the station house. Bertha, who had been watching him, watching for him at least, realized, you know, that he was no longer in San Jose. And this fuel her jealousy. Sometime prior to all of this, he had disappeared for several days and he hadn't said a word to her about it. She learned in the newspaper that he had actually been in Mexico, and so she believed that he was going to leave her and move to Mexico. Despite getting back from Oakland on May 27th, he didn't actually see Bertha until the evening of May 29th. He says that he asked for the night off, actually, so that he could take her to the theater. Bertha tells a different story, though. You see, a few months earlier, Frank Baronda was arrested and charged with voting fraud. Apparently, he'd been buying votes for something, and I'm not sure what. Bertha says that Frank told her he'd taken the night off because he'd heard he was about to be re-arrested for that. So he denied that and said he just wanted to take his wife out for a nice date. Apparently, on those two nights off from work per month, they always went to the theater together. It was just kind of their thing. They ate supper together that evening on May 29th, and she asked him where he had been. He told her that he'd gone to Oakland and that he stayed with his sister. Bertha wasn't convinced, though, and in her mind, she believed that he was only back there in San Jose to pack up his things and leave her forever. After they finished eating, they went to the Jose Theater. It was late when they returned home, and San Pedro Street was quiet. Inside, everything appeared ordinary. Frank later insisted that there was no argument at all. There was no shouting. There was no warning. Bertha lit a coal oil lamp, and the two were in bed together, talking quietly. She began feeling very sad about her perceived breakdown of the marriage, and she started to cry. She asked him something. Did he still love her the way he had at the beginning? And he said yes. And then the calmness of the moment completely broke. Frank said he didn't know why it happened. And Bertha said Frank had made a very inappropriate, vulgar, astonishing proposition. Anything beyond that, Bertha didn't remember, she said. There was a razor conveniently placed beside the bed. Bertha grabbed it and slashed. There wasn't a struggle. There wasn't a fight. It was just a sudden, violent act. Frank had been severely cut. Somewhere. After she gashed him, he said, 'She told him to stop shouting and she'd call a doctor for him.' She left the room. Room, and then Frank ran screaming to the firehouse. Whatever had just been done to him, it was bad enough that he didn't stop and think. He just ran. He was at the side door of the firehouse when one of his co-workers heard him screaming. When the firemen saw him, they said that his bedclothes were covered in blood. They did what they could in that moment, and they called for doctors and the police. Meanwhile, Bertha went to the little home of Frank's nephew, Bert, who lived in a small building just a little ways away from their house. She went into his room a bit after midnight, almost immediately after the cutting, and she woke him up. She told him simply, 'Frank is hurt.' And he asked, like, 'Where? You know, where did this happen? Where is he?' And she said, 'It was just at the house.' And then Bertha left. A man named Elmer Mitchell was in charge of the switch house at the Broad Gauge Depot. Now, this was a train station. The switch tower always had its... lights off at night so that it wouldn't interfere with the signal lights. He said that Bertha arrived in the switch tower dressed in men's clothing and immediately fell upon the floor. She had told him in the past that she often wore men's clothing when she went hunting with Frank, so he didn't ask her about why she was dressed that way. Well, she told him that she had just slashed Frank and she didn't know how badly he was hurt because it was done in the dark. Elmer said that he was actually very busy at the time because the passenger trains were running late and they had just started to arrive. He spoke to her, you know, in between his duties as he could. But he suggested that she go back home and see if Frank was okay. She told him she was afraid she'd be arrested because she was in men's clothes. And he told her that she could borrow his bicycle. And then, if the police saw her, they would just think that she was a man. And this confuses me. I don't know if it was illegal for a woman to be dressed in men's clothes. Or what? But that's what it said. So she could use the bicycle, and then they would believe that she was just a man. So maybe women also didn't ride bikes. Like, I don't know. This was very confusing. Anyway, back to the story. So Bertha left on his bike and she then later came back to the switch tower around 2 o'clock a. m. I don't know where she went. The police officers arrived at the rail yard soon after she returned. And so she saw them coming. She tried to get back on the bike to make an escape, but she was caught. She was taken to the patrol wagon, and then she was taken straight to the city jail. According to police chief Carroll, she admitted to him that she had cut Frank in the dark. When asked why she had done it, she said that she was afraid Frank was going to desert her and move to Mexico. Meanwhile, back at the fire station, doctors arrived and saw that Frank was still bleeding profusely. He was losing a lot of blood, actually. They took him to the hospital. The Red Cross hospital and they treated him for this grave injury. The newspapers reported that he was, quote, slashed so badly that he probably will not recover. The district attorney said that she would be charged with mayhem. Unless he were to die, then it would be murder. So they just had to wait and see what happened. Even though he was very weak from shock and loss of blood, it was soon clear that Frank would live. Now they were just worried he may develop blood poisoning. It was June 1st that he swore to a complaint of mayhem against his wife. Justice Brown had actually gone to the hospital so that Frank didn't have to try to get out of bed because he was too weak. Now, I didn't know what mayhem meant in a legal sense, but the papers printed it. So here's a quote. 'A person who prives a human being of a member of his body or renders it useless, or cuts or disables the tongue, or puts out an eye, or slits the tongue, nose, ear, or lip is guilty of mayhem.' Section 204 of the Code states that mayhem is punishable by imprisonment in the state prison not exceeding 14 years. So, being charged with mayhem. That charge kind of tells you everything you need to know. Under the law, mayhem meant depriving someone of a member of their body or rendering it useless. Basically, mutilating a person in some way. The papers would not say exactly what it was. I mean, literally, they did not say. They didn't state. It was a finger. They didn't state, you know, that she cut anything on his face. They would not say. Even when talking about court testimony, the newspapers would say, 'Simply say something like, the doctors described the nature of the wound.' They would not go into detail on the testimony. It was too much to print. If you Google Bertha Boronda, you will see claims that she cut off Frank's penis that night. certainly they would not have printed something so sensitive in the papers in 1907. If she had cut off a finger, you know, they probably would have said that. If she had cut anywhere on his face, I'm sure that would have been openly stated. The fact that they kept so mum on the details does suggest that it may have been his penis. However, there is literally nothing in the historical record that says that this is what happened. I went to Wikipedia to see what source was cited for that claim, and it says that it's actually unconfirmed. Apparently, someone in the year... 2006 wrote an article saying that someone back in 1940 had gone to the basement of the courthouse and found a quote shriveled organ in a jar, and that this was all that remained of Frank Boronda. Well, 2006 was 99 years after the incident took place. And even 1940 was 33 years later. If you've listened to all of our episodes, you know as well as I do that the story changes when it's written about decades later. And here's where I'm going to stop because I could sit here and speculate. I could try to fill in the blank the way so many other retellings have. But the truth is, the people who were there didn't say it. Not in the newspapers, not in the testimony that was shared with the public. It's not anywhere in the historical record. And I'm not going to say it for them. I will leave it where they left it. The trial began on January 14th, 1908. Bertha claimed that after Frank made that vile proposition that night, everything just went black until she regained her senses later that morning while sitting in the city hall. Her defense was obviously going for insanity. On January 17th, Bertha was found guilty of mayhem after two hours of deliberation. On February 24th, she was sentenced to five years in San Quentin for in the words of the reporters, having unspeakably mutilated her husband. She was taken to San Quentin on February 29, 1908, and she was the only woman prisoner who had ever been received at San Quentin on the 29th of February of any year. She only served two years of her five-year sentence, and after that she disappears from the newspapers until you get to June of 1917. Bertha, who actually went by Bessie— she put an ad in the San Francisco newspaper.

Quote: 18:19

Middle-aged woman wishes situation as housekeeper on a ranch where a man is the boss. Mrs. Bessie Baronda, 1187 Ellis Street. So that is her ad. So she wants to work as a housekeeper on a ranch for a man. Now, that might have worked out. That might have, because it isn't until 13 months later that we see another ad. It says she's looking for a position as a housekeeper and cook on a ranch for three or more men. Mrs. Bessie Boronda, 627 Octavia Street. Now, about three years after that, Bessie Baronda married a man named Alexander Patterson. She was 44 at the time and he was 55. This apparently ended in divorce, but I could find no specifics. As for Frank Baronda, in 1914, he was mentioned in the paper as being a stagecoach driver. He was about 51 years old at the time, so I imagine he had retired from the fire station. Back in 1914, The age of 51 was actually considered to be elderly. So, surprise! Now, in 1922, Frank was in court for bankruptcy. The paper said that he had $242 in assets, like to his name, and then an additional $15 worth of whatever was claimed. exempt. And at some point, Frank remarried again. I don't know what year it was, but he had a very young wife named Josephine Carmela Warburton. Now, she was actually 33 years younger than he was. And for some reason, I just really feel like this is another good indicator that his penis was not shriveled up in a jar in the basement of the courthouse. Now, over time, the story of Bertha Boronda became more detailed. It became more specific, more certain. People began to say exactly what she did that night with confidence, right? They said it very definitively, as if it had always been known. But when you go back to the beginning, like I have, to the people who were there, to the doctors, the witnesses, the court, the newspapers. That certainty isn't there. What is there? Is silence. They used very careful language. They avoided details. A crime that was described as unspeakable was left that way. And maybe that's the most honest version of the story that we're ever going to get. Not the one that fills in the blanks, but the one that leaves them exactly where they are. They called it unspeakable, and then, they never spoke of it again. Thanks to Olivia for pushing me to cover this case. And a big thanks to Mike Detweiler for telling me about the California Digital Newspaper Collection. I couldn't have found all of these details without it. And also, of course, shoutouts to Newspapers. com, FamilySearch, and Find a Grave, and Pixabay. This has been a Fun-Sized Felony.