Vermont Street Photograph by Chris Woo

Louise Teuber lived with her father William and her grandmother on Vermont Street, just to the north of a deep canyon that separated their neighborhood from Hillcrest to the southwest.

A note from the editor: This week, we present the second of the two entries to last year’s writing contest that investigated the long-ago murder of a young woman in San Diego. Once again, the author has dug long enough and deep enough to put forward a possible culprit.

— Matthew Lickona

Vermont Street Photograph by Chris Woo

About the author: Richard Carrico is a lecturer of American Indian history at San Diego State University. As an archaeologist and historian, he is well suited by both temperament and interest in investigating cold cases — sometimes, very cold cases. Whether turning a trowel through ancient midden soils or thumbing through old documents, delving into the past is what he does. Carrico is drawn to mystery, and the past is full of it.

Truly sensational news coverage sold papers in 1931, as it does today. When it came to criminal activities, members of the press, who often had a cozy relationship with the police, considered themselves part of the investigations. San Diego police officers and reporters often shared elbow room and cigars in public at downtown coffee shops, and surreptitiously at speakeasys south of Market Street (and even in the venerable U. S. Grant Hotel — downstairs of course, served by a private elevator).

With a case this old, documentation can be sketchy. Despite months of investigation and interrogations, police never took a suspect to trial in the Louise Teuber murder case. There are no homicide court proceedings or judicial testimony. With or without a trial, typical documentation of the time included police reports, an autopsy, an inquest, maybe a hearing, and of course, the often incorrect, innuendo-filled, and lurid newspaper accounts. Even a California Public Records Act request — the state equivalent of the federal Freedom of Information Act — could not pry almost ninety-year-old police records open for this story. The City of San Diego asserts that the police records are exempt from public disclosure under Section 2350(f) Investigatory Files, which prevents divulging information on unclosed cases.

Born in Mexicali, 29-year-old Antonio Espinoza Martinez lived in a neighborhood of Lemon Grove described as having a “Mexican population with no paved streets or addresses.” Just before noon on Sunday, April 19, 1931, Martinez, who was out for a drive, pulled off of the winding concrete ribbon known as Mission Gorge Road. He parked his automobile in a flat area at the base of Black Mountain, within what is now Mission Trails Regional Park. The coastal marine layer of fog had burned off, and the temperature was edging towards the high 60s.

San Diego High School Yearbook Photograph of Louise Teuber.

During the day, the wooded area, which offered huge oak canopies, provided a local picnic spot for families. In the evenings, however, the oak canopy hosted a different clientele — a younger party crowd, taking drags of unfiltered cigarettes and toasting with illegal liquor. A few years earlier, San Diego State College — now San Diego State University — had begun the ritual of marking the upper hillside of Black Mountain with a large white S. The letter became more permanent when a local paint store donated gallons of white paint to the college. Eventually, the spot became a landmark: the large rocks, formed into an S shape, could be seen from miles away. Some nights, the huge letter was illuminated by road flares held by college fraternity boys. As a result, over time, Black Mountain, also known as Cowles Mountain, also came to be known as S Mountain. But all that was at night.

Mr. Martinez, his wife Margaret, and their two young boys planned to hike a few yards to a favorite picnic spot in the shade of old oaks. But before Mr. Martinez could unload the wicker picnic basket from his vehicle, he made a gruesome discovery, one he later said he never forgot. Amongst the gnarled oak trees and leafy ground cover was a nearly nude young woman, hanging by a rope from a tree limb. The dusty shoes on her feet barely scraped the ground. Hurrying his family away from the scene, Martinez drove to the nearest pay phone and contacted the police, who called the San Diego County Coroner. The sad saga surrounding the death of beautiful 17-year-old Louise Teuber had begun.

Portrait of a “Modern Girl”

In more than one news article, Teuber was called a “Modern Girl” a term which could have meant different things to different people. To the older generation, it might mean slightly immoral, even loose. At the very least, too overtly sexual or flippant. A newspaper cartoon from those days showed a matronly older woman in the foreground and a sleek, short-haired young woman in the background. The caption read, “When I was a girl, a dress had to pinned on, but a modern girl just holds her dress above her head an’ wiggles, an’ she’s ready to go.”

Born in 1914 in San Diego to Elenore and William Teuber, Teuber was only two and a half years old when her mother suddenly died. As a teenager, she wore her dark hair just above the shoulders in the short bob that was the style of the time. Film star Louise Brooks, who actually filmed a couple of her silent movies in San Diego County, had popularized the style. Teuber lived with her father William and her grandmother on Vermont Street, just to the north of a deep canyon that separated their neighborhood from Hillcrest to the southwest. In her San Diego High School yearbook photograph from 1930, she presents the image of a happy young woman with an engaging smile and vivid eyes.

Teuber dated several young men. There was Leslie Airhart, who attended San Diego High School a year or two before Teuber. He was 5’10,” 160 pounds, with blue eyes. There was Cyril Smith, a 20-year-old flight instructor who flew gamblers down to the Agua Caliente racetrack in Tijuana and took Teuber on flights around San Diego. There were others, but it’s not clear just how many: Teuber sometimes liked to embellish her stories and maybe even create boyfriends that did not exist. On the Friday night before her death, she supposedly told close friend Lillian Dusenberry that she and a “new boyfriend” were eloping the next day, bound for Chicago. Uncharacteristically, she would not divulge her suitor’s name or provide other details. There was some speculation that the mystery boyfriend, if he existed at all, was a Jerry Tallman whom Teuber had introduced to a newsboy pal a few days before her death. Little was ever learned about “Jerry.”

Her close circle of friends included former high school classmates, co-workers, sailors, and family friends. They went roller skating at the Mission Beach Rink, attended dances at the ballrooms that dotted the landscape, spent idle time at the beach, went to the movies, and occasionally drove up an unmarked dirt road off of Mission Gorge Road to a secluded party spot in an oak grove at the foot of S mountain.

The young men and women of the era had more independence than previous generations, in large part because of the automobile. Not everyone was happy with the development. The University of Illinois banned autos from campus in an effort to reduce “heavy necking and petting.” In San Diego, police patrols regularly cruised past cars parked in “lover’s lanes” near Balboa Park and Mount Helix.

Teuber and her father increasingly argued over her lifestyle and nightlife. Mr. Teuber thought his daughter spent too much time out of the house and ran with some kids that he did not approve of. Perhaps he even agreed with some of the newspaper editorials that decried roller skating as too sexual and permissive, what with all the touching and those short skate skirts. But as teenagers do, Teuber sought her own independence. In a letter to her father that was delivered only after her death, she wrote, “Dear Dad-I have tried for a long time to be satisfied with the way you are running the house and I can stand it no longer. I am leaving home to-night and I am not coming back.” Sadly, prescient words.

Young Louise felt smothered in San Diego and, despite enjoying plenty of friends and activities, longed for a more adventurous life. She also left her sister a note that read in part, “When you get this note, tell the folks not to worry. I couldn’t stay in San Diego another day…” At the bottom of the note was a childishly drawn skull and crossbones. In a letter to her aunt and uncle in Chicago, written the week before her murder, she wrote, “I was just a little girl trying to get along. Everything comes at once and I don’t know which to do.” She told them she went roller skating a lot and was getting pretty good at what she called “fancy skating.” She could even do backwards turns. She also complained that “This town is so dead, I am afraid it will burn up some day. No excitement at all.”

Crime Scene Photograph of the Louise Teuber Murder April 19, 1931.

The night in question

On Saturday morning, April 18th, Teuber left her house on Vermont Street to go to work in the hardware department at Kress’ dime store in Downtown San Diego. She walked the couple of blocks south to University Avenue, where she caught the No. 11 streetcar to Fifth Avenue. At Fifth, she transferred to another streetcar that took her downtown to her job. A couple of nights before, she and her father had quarreled again over her late nights away from home, and he had sought to restrict her to the house.

Later, William Teuber came to regret his harsh last words with his daughter. At the April 27 inquest, he collapsed, sobbing. On April 28th, the calling hours for Louise drew friends and family to the Merkley Mortuary in Hillcrest. Banks of flowers surrounded the casket, many placed there by Teuber’s female co-workers and friends. Mr. Teuber requested that the rites should be private. The public honored his request within the chapel, but outside, crowds gathered. He had purposely selected the Merkley Mortuary because his wife had been mourned there fourteen years before. He cried softly as undercover detectives scanned the attendees, hoping that the killer might show up and reveal some sign of guilt. Reverend Milo Atkinson oversaw the services and asked for divine guidance “that officers might seek out the slayers.” Following the service, Teuber was cremated. Her ashes were then interred at Greenwood Memorial Park, near her mother. But all that was later.

At 5:30 pm on the 18th, Teuber received her weekly pay of $11.65 in cash, securely sealed in its small manila envelope, from her friend and Kress’ cashier, Dore Sena. She cryptically told Sena she was leaving San Diego for good. Earlier, she had told Edwin Spencer, a friend and taxi driver, that she was going to go to Seattle that evening, and he made plans to meet with her at 5:30 to talk more about her plans.

A sensational story

Presented with this and other information, the press, with typical tactlessness, practiced a literary form of public victim shaming and objectification. Police revealed the contents of her leather-bound diary with its gold bindings and small padlock to guard its secrets. Those secrets turned into salacious fodder. The press labeled Teuber the “Butterfly Girl,” the “Party Girl,” and the “Five and Dime Girl,” writing that her diary “revealed a love of a good time” and “fun times with lots of fellows.” Teuber was “17 and pretty,” she was the “attractive 17-year-old store clerk,” she was “the pretty young store clerk” and the “pretty young shop girl.” The coded message in all this might well have been that attractive and “vivacious” young women — “Modern Women” who liked a “good time” — might meet bad ends. Victimology studies a victim’s history to understand probable motive; this was closer to profiling the victim in an effort to portray her as somehow inducing her own death.

In the search for the murderer or connections to the murderer, the rumor mill ground out innuendo, half-truths, and the occasional accurate detail. At least one acquaintance, Loretta Othick, told investigators that Teuber was secretly married to a fellow in the Navy, while another was fairly sure the supposed secret husband served in the Marines. A sailor on the USS West Virginia, supposedly married to Teuber, proved to be neither married to her nor a viable suspect. This despite a newspaper’s misleading headline, “Reveals Slain Girl Married” and “Friend Confirms Report Teuber Girl Was Wed.” Teuber’s older married sister Isabel Prouty, a stenographer, debunked such notions and said she would have known of any such arrangement and added, “she was having too good of a time to get married.” Other persons of interest included a young man who falsely confessed to achieve notoriety, a couple of local sex offenders, and what might be called the usual suspects.

The investigation

Police examinations that followed the discovery of Teuber’s body reflect the best and worst of criminal investigations. At the crime scene, investigators took several photos of the hanging body and of the surroundings. Evidence was carefully noted and collected, including a 20-foot length of heavy and carefully knotted rope, Teuber’s neatly piled clothing, a brown army blanket, and other personal items, including the wristwatch still on her cold, limp wrist.

Because the inquest documents for Teuber are apparently lost or misfiled, I have had to rely on the newspaper reports more than I would like. But teasing out the truth from the misinformation provided valuable and interesting details. By the time that the autopsy report was filed, the newspapers had settled down somewhat, and probably gave a reasonably accurate account of the inquest and subsequent events.

Investigator Displaying the Rope, Louise’s Diary on the Right, and Her Clothing.

From the <em>San Diego Evening Tribune</em>

Moving beyond details of clothing and general location, the autopsy report attempted to resolve speculation about whether the young woman had committed suicide or been murdered. Investigators had developed the suicide angle, not her friends or family. Astonishingly, in the 1920s and 1930s, San Diego ranked in the top two cities in the nation for recorded suicides, with a rate of 50 per 100,000. (Today, suicide rates hover between 13 and 16 per 100,000.) Several of the San Diego suicides, but a minority, had been committed by young women who were recently jilted, pregnant, or suffering from an unsatisfactory home life. None, however, were nude at the time of death.

The rare occurrences of women committing suicide in the nude, especially by hanging, are largely discounted by police investigators. For example, the family, some investigators (and many profilers) disputed the findings in the 2011 Rebecca Zahau case in Coronado, In that case, a young woman was determined by the authorities to have bound her own hands and then hanged herself in the nude from a small balcony. While the matter is still unresolved in the minds of many persons, the Zahau family won a civil suit against the brother of Rebecca’s lover.

In this case, homicide detectives pointed out that Teuber must have been taken to the lonely spot, given that there was no evidence that she drove herself. Yet no cabbies remembered taking her there. The circumstances of the rope, in terms of positioning, did not indicate that she had lifted herself up from the ground. Someone had carefully tied the end of the rope to an adjacent tree or large bush, probably after she was hoisted aloft, which further discredited the notion of death by suicide. The coroner concluded that Teuber had suffered at least two blows to the back of her head —there were wounds that he suggested had been caused by the type of heavy ring a man might wear — and then hanged. The report further suggested that Teuber was choked, but not to death, before she was hanged. Her neck was not broken, showing that she had strangled to death.

Some investigators surmised from the position of her body in rigor mortis that someone had actually killed her elsewhere and then taken her to Mission Gorge. There, they supposed, a suicide scene had been created. Possible specks of human skin under her nails implied that Louise put up a vain struggle before her death. Remnants of only partially digested egg and bread in her stomach gave investigators some clue as to her last meal. She ate no more than twelve hours, and more likely less than four hours, before her death. No alcohol, drugs, or signs of poisoning showed up in Teuber’s blood or stomach.

The oak tree limb bore abrasion marks, suggesting that the rope slid along its surface as Louise slowly ascended to nearly, but not quite, clear the ground. Then the killer tied the loose end of the rope to a shrub, walked to his car, and drove off into the night. In his reconstruction of the murder, Lieutenant Sheriff Ed Cooper told reporters that “after placing the noose about her neck and seeing her ivory-white body against a black background… he probably became frightened and left in a hurry.” The carefully tied double-hitch noose led some to suspect that the killer knew his knots, and might be Navy, or at least have had nautical experience.

For a moment, it seemed as if tire tracks from the murder scene might yield important and damning information. The San Diego Union ran a headline: “Auto Tire Clew Gives New Life to Search for Teuber Slayer.” Using the best forensic methods of the time, the tracks were photographed and sketched. With the cooperation of local tire shops and auto dealerships, police compared the photos to tires sold and used in San Diego. But the tire angle soon faded. The search was hopeless — unless they cuffed a suspect and examined his tires.

The hanged suspect

One suspect briefly appeared to be a good possibility for the murderer, given circumstantial evidence and certain events. Little is known about John Parcellano beyond the fact that within days of Teuber’s murder, he hanged himself in a San Mateo, California cemetery. Parcellano’s tenuous links to the murder were his method of suicide — he used what the press described as a similar noose — the fact that he had scratches and bruises on his face, and that he may have been in San Diego when Louise died.

Herman Newby, U. S. Navy.

Courtesy Diane Powe

And there was this: less than a week after Parcellano’s suicide, a man approached Thomas St. John, who worked at the Park Manor Hotel on 5th and Spruce, and asked where he could mail a letter. St. John said the hotel had a mail drop, and that he would be glad to post the letter. But as he walked into the lobby to use the mail slot, St. John noticed it was addressed to the San Diego police department and the coroner’s office. Instead of posting the letter, St. John gave the letter to the desk clerk and alerted police, who immediately sent a patrolman to take custody of the document. The letter, without offering any solid evidence, warned the police that they were pursuing the wrong man. The writer said that Louise’s killer was indeed the deceased John Parcellano. Investigators alternated between believing the letter was from a crank and that it was perhaps was an effort to divert their attention from some unspecified suspect.

“Unusual snapshots”

A better, or at least more salacious, possibility: the phrase “unusual snapshots taken near some back-country mountain resort” appeared in the newspapers early in the investigation. Soon, the name of ex-Navy man Herman Newby came forth. A search of amateur photographer Newby’s home produced “numerous wood nymphs, paintings and copies of classical art paintings, based on living girl models and on photographs.” Claiming to be an artist, Newby proclaimed his innocence of the charge that he had violated moral codes. Even so, on April 22nd, Herman R. Newby was arrested on possible morals charges involving young Louise Teuber. His wife Cecile posted a $500 bond that evening. Police released him to await formal charges and trial. He had married Cecile a year before he left the Navy, and moved to San Diego soon after that. Both Cecile, known as Ceci, and her parents had been living in San Diego for some time. Early in the marriage, Cecile worked as a milliner in nearby La Mesa. She took part in local arts and crafts fairs, and was well known in the her community.

The Newbys purchased a small bungalow on Maryland Street on the edge of University Heights. They also had access to a relative’s small cabin in Whispering Pines, a retreat in the mountains east of San Diego. For Newby, part of the attraction of Whispering Pines may also have been the small group of nudists who frequented the area. According to his daughter Diane, he had always wanted to be a nudist. She was embarrassed that he often paraded around their small house in the nude.

Now retired from the Navy, Herman Newby took up a hobby that brought him great pleasure, but one which would also send him to jail. He photographed nude or semi-nude young women, and then either retouched the enlarged photos or painted portraits from the photographs. His daughter said her father did not sell the paintings. He gave some as gifts to family members, but most he kept for his own enjoyment. Diane said that her father took his art seriously and considered himself a creative artist.

Teuber was only sixteen years old when Newby first photographed her. According to testimony provided later by his wife, Newby took some photos of young women, including Teuber, at the isolated Whispering Pines mountain cabin. The Union could not resist suggesting that of course the photographer had selected Teuber as a model, “for it was said she had a rounded graceful figure.” When asked to state his whereabouts on April 18th, the night of the murder, Newby said he and his wife drove to the Whispering Pines cabin to relax returning to San Diego late that night. And according to his extremely nervous wife, the couple had spent the evening of the murder at the cabin and returned home late, although she did not remember how late. She admitted that she turned in when they arrived home. She was not sure what time Herman came to bed.

Teuber’s father dismissed the alibi provided by Mrs. Newby, and between sobs said, “I believe these pictures were the cause of my daughter’s death.” Regarding the nude photographs, the elder Teuber said, “we were neighbors for four years. I never thought Newby would do such a thing. I never gave him permission.” Teuber told the court that the nude photos of his young daughter were apparently “taken in January at a party at Whispering Pines on my daughter’s 16th birthday.” Throughout the investigation, the bereaved father continued to point the finger of accusation towards Newby. Police disregarded the accusations as just those of a bereaved father.

While the investigation into Louise’s murder continued, Newby stood trial on charges of printing and possessing indecent pictures. He admitted he knew Teuber had just turned sixteen when he photographed her. But she was, as he said, “mature looking and oh so beautiful.” On May 9, 1931, nearly two months after Teuber’s murder, Newby pleaded guilty to possessing indecent photographs. The judge sentenced Newby to six months in jail, which he served immediately. His name apparently never came up again as a suspect in Teuber’s death. While he was imprisoned, Ceci Newby divorced Herman.

Newby’s new life

Upon his release, Newby moved to Arkansas and remarried. He and his new wife, Jo Nelle, had two children together, Diane and Francis. My first correspondence with Diane Powe took the form of a very polite, non-accusatory letter. I explained I was writing a history based in San Diego. I asked her if her father or other family members had ever mentioned the murder of Louise Teuber or any murders from 1931. I pointed out that her father had lived in the same neighborhood as the murdered girl, and that her murder was quite sensational for the times. The letter was a long shot. Her first response came sooner than I expected, and included these chilling lines: “Do you know if my father was ever a suspect? My father was not a good man… he was a drunk with a violent temper. When I was a young girl, he did sexual things to me and beat my mother and brother. He often said that all women were whores and prick teasers. He threatened to kill us several times.” Diane asserted that he had kept a cache of photographs of her in bikinis. Even though I had not accused Newby of murder or even implied it, she wrote, “My first reaction was HE DID IT.” She closed out that letter by writing, “I don’t know if he ever killed anyone, but I do believe he was capable.”

Louise Teuber as She Appeared in Newspaper Articles- Dead at Seventeen in a Manner Most Gruesome.

After only six years of marriage, Jo Nelle and Herman separated in September 1939, and she soon filed for divorce. Echoing Cecilia Newby’s grounds for the first divorce, Jo Nelle stated in the divorce papers that she was subjected to,“cruel and inhumane treatment. The defendant is alleged to have an incorrigible temper.” A year after the divorce was finalized, Herman Newby was arrested and convicted on charges of assault and battery on an unnamed person near Greenfield, Indiana. Newby was fined and assessed court costs but spent no time in jail.

Jo Nelle was given custody of their one-year-old daughter Diane, but courts in those days often thought that boys should be raised by their father, and Herman gained custody of five-year-old Francis. According to Diane Newby Powe, in spite of the divorce, her mother and the children stayed with Newby on and off for 12 years after the divorce. Diane believes that her mother could not stand to lose her son, who Herman said he would take far away, and so endured until Frank was old enough to flee the household by joining the Navy.

Degradation and denial

The semi-nude condition of Louise when they found her hanging from the tree is what profiler John E. Douglas calls a “degrading position” intending to disgrace or degrade the victim, even in death. Do you see some elements of a killer’s profile in Herman’s profane words? I do. So why was Herman Newby apparently never a prime suspect? Based on the testimony of his wife Cecile, who said that she was with Herman at their Whispering Pines cabin the afternoon and evening of the murder, police dropped Newby from the active suspects list. Law enforcement accepted, with far less skepticism than today, the testimony of a wife or husband or even of an “upstanding” person to verify an alibi. But Cecile may have lied. The abusive Newby may have forced her to lie. Sadly, women in abusive relationships often lie for their men, and cover up their violence and abuse. There is evidence that much later, Newby’s second wife, Jo Nelle, also provided excuses and alibis for him during less serious run-ins with the law, and that she too feared him on several levels.

The noted profiler and psychologist Dr. Schurman-Kauflin wrote regarding wives who lie for their abusers and killers: “Some play their part and aid their spouses because they fear the ‘shame’ and potential judgment if the truth came out. They cannot believe such a horrible thing is happening, and if they keep it secret then somehow it is less real. In a very twisted type of thinking they would rather live with their secret and play their role in the abuse than to face shame or any potential consequences.”

Unsolved, but not closed

As the months went by, the Los Angeles Times and critics from Sacramento chided San Diego law enforcement for being unable to solve not only Teuber’s murder but also others that occurred in 1931. “We could have saved innocent lives,” they proclaimed. The Times labeled the overall San Diego investigation “Poor Police Work.” Local law enforcement offices chafed at the criticism but acknowledged that no progress was being made. Even the San Diego Union later admitted that over a six-year span, there were thirteen unsolved murders. The paper asked, rhetorically, “When will it end, this reign of terror?”

Strangely and inexplicably, in February 1934, deputy sheriff Virgil P. Gray, a Los Angeles crime expert who studied the Teuber case for several years, declared to the press that the case should be closed. Without any details, and in direct opposition to the medical examiner’s report, Gray stated that Teuber had committed suicide by hanging. Beyond a news article or two in mid-February, no other information is available for Gray’s assertion. Certainly, in later articles detailing unsolved murders in San Diego, there is no indication that the case was considered solved or closed.

As I think about the case, I keep coming back to the neatly folded pile of clothes and the blanket. Who folds clothes neatly? The person who owns and takes care of them: Louise Teuber. But why remove them in such a remote location? Probably not in the heat of passion; who pauses to fold clothes then? But maybe for a photo shoot. Teuber’s friend Airhart testified that Teuber had tried to borrow money from him to fund her escape from San Diego, but he refused. Maybe someone else offered her another way to make some cash.

The possibility of a photo shoot raises the question of who the photographer might be. Only one person comes immediately to mind. Herman Newby, for whom Louise had posed nude in the past, and who she may have trusted. If Newby, or someone else to be fair, offered her money to pose in a natural setting for an “artistic” nighttime shoot, might she have suggested the oak grove where she and friends had partied in the past?

It seems equally possible, though, that she may have posed elsewhere: in a house or a cabin. Maybe the San Diego Union got it right when a headline reported, “Believe Teuber Girl Slugged in San Diego room.” Perhaps the photographer who wanted more salacious images of her; perhaps he grew enraged when she refused. In that scenario, Louise, still alive but perhaps unconscious, may have been wrapped in the army blanket and taken to Mission Gorge, where the suicide ruse was enacted. Herman Newby’s daughter Diane told me in a letter that “I can see him killing her in a rage and setting the scene to draw suspicion away from him.” My father was very clever, she told me.

In either case, the killer probably owned an automobile and had experience tying half-hitch knots in relatively thick rope. Who was he? I think that Herman Newby, an ex-Navy man with a knowledge of ropes and knots, an alcoholic abuser of girls and women, a photographer of underage girls including Louise herself, a wearer of a large heavy Navy ring, and a man who considered all women to be “prick teasers” is a pretty good bet.