Louise Peete was convicted of murder twice in Los Angeles, for killings in 1920 and 1944. In 1921 a jury found her guilty of the first-degree murder of Jacob Charles Denton, the owner of a house she had leased the year before, and fixed her punishment at life imprisonment. She served 18 years and was released in 1939. In November 1943 a woman named Margaret R. Logan hired her to help look after an elderly, ailing husband. Margaret Logan died in May 1944, and from then until December Peete lived in the Logan home, answered Mrs. Logan's mail in her name and told callers that she had gone away. She was arrested in December 1944, convicted of first-degree murder in 1945 and sentenced to death. The Supreme Court of California upheld the judgment in 1946, the United States Supreme Court declined to hear her case, and she was executed in the gas chamber at San Quentin State Prison on April 11, 1947. She was 66.
The fullest account of both killings is the opinion of the Supreme Court of California in People v. Peete, decided on June 7, 1946. Because the prosecution in 1945 had used the Denton case as evidence, the court set out the facts of both cases side by side. Local newspapers in Los Angeles and Pacific Palisades fill in some of the rest.
Accounts of Peete's early life come mainly from later newspaper features. The Washington Examiner, in a 2010 history column, described her as a gray-haired Southern belle from a wealthy Louisiana family. The Palisadian-Post, the community newspaper of Pacific Palisades, wrote in 2008 that she was born in 1883 to a wealthy New Orleans family, that she was expelled from finishing school, and that she had three husbands, each of whom died. In 2014 the same paper wrote that her first husband, whom she married in 1903, killed himself after finding her with another man, and that a similar pattern followed in 1913 with another man. It also reported that she had been accused of killing a man named Joe Appel, that she said she had acted in self-defense, and that she was not charged.
None of those earlier deaths led to a conviction, and no court record of any of them has been reported. They are reported events only. She had a daughter, and in 1920, when the Denton investigation began, she was living in Denver.
In 1920 Peete leased a house in Los Angeles that belonged to Jacob Charles Denton. An undated newspaper report of her trial, preserved in the Utah Digital Newspapers collection, said that Denton kept an apartment in the house while she rented it. About two weeks after she took the lease, on June 2, 1920, Denton disappeared. The prosecution's case at trial was that he was last seen alive that day and that she killed him the same day.
What she did over the following months became the core of the case against her. As the Supreme Court of California summarized it in 1946, she gave people a series of explanations for his absence. She said he had been shot by an unknown "Spanish woman," that he was hiding because he was ashamed of the wound, that his arm had been amputated, and that he had gone to one part of the country or another. Meanwhile she rented his house to a third person on a lease that carried his forged signature. She drew forged checks on his bank account and tried to get into his safety deposit box. She pawned his diamond rings and said the money had gone to the Spanish woman. She gave away some of his clothes and had others made over for her daughter.
Denton's body was found in Los Angeles on September 23, 1920. He had been shot. About a month later, according to the same newspaper report, Peete came to Los Angeles from Denver and said she would help the police. She was indicted and arrested.
The trial opened in Los Angeles on January 19, according to the newspaper report; the Supreme Court of California dated the conviction to 1921. The prosecution argued that Denton had been killed on June 2, the last day anyone saw him. Witnesses testified that after that date Peete pawned one of his diamond rings and disposed of his clothes and other belongings, and several said she had given them conflicting accounts of where he was. The newspaper report said she maintained that Denton was alive after June 2, that she did not know where he had gone, and that he had given her permission to dispose of his things. Her lawyers argued that none of the prosecution's claims had been proved beyond a reasonable doubt.
On February 5, 1921, the jury found her guilty of murder in the first degree and fixed the penalty at life imprisonment. According to the Supreme Court of California, she did not take the witness stand at that trial. She later gave a deputy district attorney an explanation of her conduct, and the court described that explanation as discredited. The conviction was affirmed on appeal.
Peete spent 18 years in the state penitentiary, according to the Supreme Court of California, and was released in 1939. The Palisadian-Post has described her release as a parole. While in prison, and after she came out, she told people that she was about to come into a valuable estate or a "trust fund." The court found those statements false and described her as without money. It also found that after her release she obtained a revolver by theft.
The Palisadian-Post reported in 2008 that she worked as a housekeeper after her release and that two of her employers, Jessie Marcy and Emily Latham, died; the paper said police listed both deaths as natural. No charge or finding connects her to either death.
In November 1943 Margaret Logan engaged Peete for domestic work and to help care for her husband, Arthur Logan. He was 73 and, in the court's words, suffering from senile dementia. The Palisadian-Post has described Margaret Logan as a real-estate broker; the court recorded that she wanted her husband cared for while she worked at an aircraft factory. The couple lived in Pacific Palisades, on the west side of Los Angeles.
Peete helped Mrs. Logan have her husband committed to an institution that month, and he was released into Mrs. Logan's care later in November. Mrs. Logan gave Peete two letters describing her as her "foster sister." They were still on Peete's person 13 months later, when she was arrested. In March 1944 Arthur Logan spent a week in a private sanitarium, whose records described him as unruly and noisy but "not dangerously violent."
Peete then drew Mrs. Logan into a plan to buy a property worth $50,000 in joint tenancy, to be paid for with money from her supposed trust fund. She could not raise the $2,000 escrow deposit, and Mrs. Logan pledged her own savings account to cover it. Peete also forged a check for $200 on Mrs. Logan's account, dated May 19, 1944. A bank cashier noticed it and told Mrs. Logan, who said the person who wrote it would pay the money back. According to the court, Peete repaid part of it only after Mrs. Logan's death, using the refund on a railroad ticket. The Palisadian-Post, looking back in 2014, described the killing as following a dispute over the forged check.
On May 2, 1944, Peete married again, in secret, and did not tell her new husband about her criminal record. That month she told several people that Arthur Logan was having "dangerous fits of violence." She told one witness that one morning the witness would wake up and read the headlines of a terrible tragedy in the paper, and she asked the witness not to mention it to Mrs. Logan.
Margaret Logan died on May 29, 1944, the day she disappeared, according to the court. She was 60, according to the Palisadian-Post. She had been shot, and she died of head injuries.
On May 31 Peete and her husband moved into the Logan house, where she lived until her arrest on December 20. About June 1, she took Arthur Logan to a probation officer and said he had attacked his wife and had bitten Peete herself. She did not say that Mrs. Logan had been shot. He was committed to a county hospital and then to Patton State Hospital. She signed Mrs. Logan's name to letters to the hospital. Arthur Logan died there on December 6, 1944.
Through the rest of 1944 she kept up the appearance that Margaret Logan was alive. When people asked where she was, Peete said she had gone for plastic surgery, or named places such as Santa Monica, Denver and New York, and she told them Mrs. Logan no longer wanted her possessions and did not intend to come back. The Palisadian-Post, drawing on its own 1944 coverage, reported that she told neighbors Mrs. Logan had been abused by her husband and was away being treated for injuries to her face, and that she told Arthur Logan his wife was in a hospital that allowed no visitors.
Meanwhile she had Mrs. Logan's clothes altered to fit herself, opened and answered her mail under her name, had the house repainted, lent or gave away her belongings, and used her car, gasoline coupons and food stamps. By forging a power of attorney in Mrs. Logan's name she drew half of the escrow deposit. After Arthur Logan's death she sent for the forms to claim a $1,425 life insurance benefit and returned them with a letter signed with Mrs. Logan's forged name. After her arrest, two deeds of gift that purported to give her the property were found under her bed.
The thread that unraveled the story was her parole. Margaret Logan was supposed to file a monthly report on her, and from June to December 1944 Peete wrote those reports herself and signed Mrs. Logan's name. The Palisadian-Post reported that suspicion fell on her when her parole officer saw that the signatures did not match Mrs. Logan's, and that on December 18, 1944, the District Attorney's office found reports that appeared to carry forged signatures.
She was arrested on December 20, 1944, while she was going through Mrs. Logan's papers. She gave the same explanations for Mrs. Logan's absence. A short search then found Margaret Logan's body. The Palisadian-Post's coverage of December 22, 1944, ran under a headline calling her the "1920 Denton Killer."
According to the Palisadian-Post, her husband had noticed signs in the house that troubled him but said nothing. He was later acquitted, and the paper reported that he took his own life after her conviction.
The Los Angeles County District Attorney charged Peete with the murder of Margaret R. Logan. She admitted the prior murder conviction and her service of that sentence.
Her defense, given in her own testimony, was that Arthur Logan had killed his wife in an insane rage on May 29, 1944, while Peete was there. She admitted that everything she did and said afterward was false, and said she had hidden the death because her criminal record would make her a suspect. She told the jury that she had heard several shots and that she had given Arthur Logan sleeping tablets.
The physical evidence did not fit that account, as the Supreme Court of California later summarized it. Only one bullet was found, though she described several shots, and the expert testimony on the weapon and the medical evidence contradicted her account. A doctor testified that he would not have prescribed the dose of sleeping tablets she said she gave Arthur Logan. A witness testified that Peete had told him by telephone that Mrs. Logan had been in an accident.
The prosecution put the Denton case before the jury: the 1920 disappearance, the false stories, the forgeries, the pawned rings, and the conviction, including the fact that it had been affirmed on appeal. The judgment roll from the Denton case was also admitted to impeach her testimony.
The jury found her guilty of first-degree murder and made no recommendation as to punishment. The Palisadian-Post, citing its coverage from 1945, reported that the jury of 11 women and one man reached the verdict on its first ballot after three hours, and gave the verdict date as May 28, 1945. The trial court denied a new trial and imposed the death penalty.
The Supreme Court of California, sitting in bank, affirmed the judgment and the order denying a new trial on June 7, 1946, in Crim. No. 4673. Justice Roger J. Traynor wrote the opinion. Chief Justice Gibson and Justices Shenk, Edmonds, Schauer and Spence joined him; Justice Carter dissented.
The central question was whether the jury should have heard about Denton. The majority held that the Denton evidence was admissible to show motive, identity, a common scheme or plan, and her knowledge and lack of good faith. It pointed to the parallels: in each case a person with property she wanted disappeared, she stayed on in that person's home, told shifting stories about the absence, forged documents and checks and took the property, and the body was later found concealed. The court held that a statute meant to keep juries from hearing prejudicial references to a prior conviction did not bar evidence that was relevant for another purpose. It also found no reversible error in the exclusion of a petition Margaret Logan had written, which the defense had offered to show that she feared her husband.
Justice Carter's dissent argued that the Denton evidence fell under the general rule against proving other crimes. He saw no common plan connecting killings 24 years apart, 18 of them spent in prison, and too little similarity to prove identity. He would have reversed and ordered a new trial limited to the Logan charge.
Her lawyer, Morris Levine, then asked the Supreme Court of the United States to review the case. On April 10, 1947, that court denied the petition for a writ of certiorari and denied a motion for a stay of execution.
Louise Peete was executed in the gas chamber at San Quentin State Prison on April 11, 1947. The Palisadian-Post and the Washington Examiner both give her age as 66. The Death Penalty Information Center's list of women executed in the United States since 1900, drawn from the Espy File, records her execution on that date by gas chamber in California.
The Palisadian-Post, in its 2008 account, quoted the San Quentin warden, Clinton Duffy, as saying that she had "an air of innocent sweetness which masked a heart of ice," and reported that before her execution she told a weeping matron and other prisoners not to be troubled, saying that death was "merely an eventuality in all our lives."
She was one of four women executed in California's gas chamber, according to the Death Penalty Information Center's list: Juanita Spinelli in 1941, Peete in 1947, Barbara Graham in 1955 and Elizabeth Duncan in 1962. The Palisadian-Post has called her the second woman in California history to die in the gas chamber.
Peete was convicted of two killings, and only those two. A great deal more has been said about her. Later newspaper features have described a trail of dead husbands and companions, and the Palisadian-Post has written that her killings "allegedly" spanned 1903 to 1944. Those claims rest on retrospective accounts, not on any reported charge, trial or court finding.
The details also vary between accounts. The Palisadian-Post gave her birth year as 1883 in 2008; an official record of her birth has not been reported. The paper's 2014 article dated Margaret Logan's killing to May 22, 1944, and said neighbors last saw her on June 1; the Supreme Court of California put her death on May 29, 1944, the day she disappeared. The 2008 article said Margaret Logan's life insurance named Peete as sole beneficiary; the court's opinion describes a $1,425 claim on Arthur Logan's life, which Peete pursued under Mrs. Logan's forged name.
The undated newspaper report of the Denton trial described Peete as maintaining at trial that Denton was alive after June 2. The Supreme Court of California said in 1946 that she did not testify at the Denton trial, so her position there was presented through her lawyers and her earlier statements rather than from the witness stand.
1903: She marries for the first time, according to the Palisadian-Post (2014); the paper reports that her husband later killed himself.
1920, about two weeks before June 2: She leases Jacob C. Denton's house in Los Angeles.
June 2, 1920: Denton is last seen alive.
September 23, 1920: Denton's body is found.
About a month later: She comes from Denver to Los Angeles, is indicted and arrested.
January 19 (1921 trial): Her murder trial opens in Los Angeles.
February 5, 1921: The jury finds her guilty of first-degree murder and fixes the penalty at life imprisonment.
1939: She is released after 18 years in the state penitentiary.
November 1943: Margaret R. Logan hires her to help care for Arthur Logan.
March 1944: Arthur Logan spends a week in a private sanitarium.
May 2, 1944: She marries again, in secret.
May 19, 1944: A forged $200 check on Margaret Logan's account is dated.
May 29, 1944: Margaret Logan dies.
May 31, 1944: She and her husband move into the Logan house.
About June 1, 1944: Arthur Logan is taken to a probation officer and committed, later to Patton State Hospital.
June to December 1944: She forges Margaret Logan's name on her monthly parole reports.
December 6, 1944: Arthur Logan dies at Patton State Hospital.
December 18, 1944: The District Attorney's office finds the reports with apparently forged signatures (Palisadian-Post).
December 20, 1944: She is arrested, and Margaret Logan's body is found.
May 28, 1945: A jury finds her guilty of first-degree murder without a recommendation of mercy (date per the Palisadian-Post); she is sentenced to death.
June 7, 1946: The Supreme Court of California affirms, with one justice dissenting.
April 10, 1947: The Supreme Court of the United States denies certiorari and a stay.
April 11, 1947: She is executed in the gas chamber at San Quentin.