Nov. 15, 1957
Los Angeles
Your name is Leonard Jackola. You’re 43 and here on a visit from
Chicago, staying with your younger sister, Mary, 30, and her family at 3634 E. 177th St.,
Torrance. Her husband, Arthur E. England, 37, is an engineer at
Northrop and they have two children, Melissa, 6, and Timothy, 3.
You are going out with a neighbor and plan to return about midnight.
Arthur has just bought a house trailer for $325 ($2,328.72 USD 2006)
and hitched it to the family’s car. He put some of his clothing in the
vehicle and packed a suitcase that he put in the trailer.
When you get home about midnight, you don’t run into anyone, so you go
to bed and wake up at 8 a.m. There’s no sign of your sister or
brother-in-law, so you make breakfast for the children and send Melissa
off to school while Timothy plays in the neighborhood.
Hours pass and there’s no sign of Arthur or Mary. At first you thought
they were sleeping late, but you eventually discover that their bedroom
door is locked. Finally, about 2 p.m., you get a stepladder and when
you peer in the bedroom window you see both of them are dead.
Torrance police open the door and find that Arthur apparently shot Mary
with a Mauser rifle, then tried to slash his throat. When that failed,
he put the barrel of the Mauser in his mouth and–well, you can imagine
what happened.
There was no suicide note, but police found $825 in cash stacked on the
dresser, along with $650 in Savings Bonds. We can infer that Arthur
planned to leave home but the news story doesn’t shed any light on the
question.
And no, you didn’t hear an argument or the two rifle shots. It’s a
miracle that a bullet didn’t go through a wall and hit someone. (I’m
assuming Arthur had some variation of a 7.65 millimeter Argentine Mauser, ammo shown above).
The Times never followed up on this story, so we don’t know what became of
Leonard or who raised the children. They would be 56 and 53 now. How
unimaginably tragic for these youngsters to lose their parents. We can
only hope for the best.
ladailymirror.com 