That association would prove fatal — for someone else.
Barbara Elaine Graham was born on June 26, 1923, in Oakland, California, and spent much of her early life in the San Francisco Bay Area. By the early 1950s she had become associated with a loose network of criminals and gamblers in Los Angeles. That association would prove fatal — for someone else.
On the morning of March 9, 1953, Graham arrived at the home of Mabel Monohan, a 64-year-old retired vaudeville performer, in Burbank, California. Graham claimed her car had broken down nearby and asked to use the phone. Monohan let her in. Within minutes, four men — Jack Santo, Emmett Perkins, John True, and Baxter Shorter — entered behind her. The plan was a robbery: a rumor had circulated that Monohan, the former mother-in-law of a gambling club owner named Luther B. Scherer, kept as much as $100,000 in cash in her home.
What happened inside the house was brutal. Monohan was beaten, gagged, and left dying on the floor of her own home. When her gardener discovered her body two days later, the case became a major Los Angeles investigation. A $5,000 reward was offered by Monohan's daughter Iris. The robbery itself had failed — the intruders found nothing in the places they searched. A purse in a closet contained $15,000 in jewelry that was never touched.