Update: And here’s a mystery photo! Update II: This is Zasu Pitts and John E. Woodall. Please congratulate Mary Mallory, Karen and Dennis Gilliam for identifying our mystery couple and Steve Stoliar, Zabadu and Stacia for identifying our mystery woman.
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Dec. 18, 1935: Above, people crowd into the inquest in the death of Thelma Todd. The Times says: “Steeped in mystery, the death of Thelma Todd, screen actress, last night remained a tragic riddle which authorities will seek to unravel at a coroner's inquest. “From tangled evidence shot through with contradictions, police hope to learn whether Miss Todd was the victim of an ingeniously contrived murder prompted by cunning jealousy, or substantiate a preponderant belief that she died in an almost unbelievable accident.”
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ladailymirror.com 
Zasu Pitts and Tom Gallery.
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Actually, is that Thelma’s ex husband Pat DeCicco?
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Well, that’s Zasu Pitts in the first photo.
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It’s Zasu’s second husband John E. Woodall.
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Zazu Pitts and Roland West?
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ZaSu Pitts and her husband # 2 John E. Woodall
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So my understanding is that “Toddy” is driven to a party on Saturday night, and returns home around 3:30 a.m. Sunday. Apparently without a key and locked out by Roland West for being out too late, she finds refuge from the cold in his garage above her apartment, where she parks her Lincoln. She is intoxicated, and she turns on the car’s engine to warm up the garage; she falls asleep is asphyxiated by carbon monoxide. The garage doors are closed, but not locked, and the car emits so much carbon monoxide that it could have quickly removed all the oxygen in the garage, killing her and snuffing the engine before it runs out of gas. As she passes out, she hits her head on the steering wheel or the dashboard, cutting her lip and knocking out a temporary front tooth.
OK, sounds plausible enough, although the dashboard injury theory sounds a little fishy. She’s dead early Sunday morning, and isn’t found until Monday morning by her maid.
And yet Mrs. Wallace Ford swears she has a telephone conversation with Toddy on Sunday afternoon, about 12 hours after she died, but before anyone knew she was dead. Toddy tells her she’s still in her evening clothes and talks about the Fords’ cocktail party. Assuming it wasn’t the read Thelma Todd, who was it, and why? If it was a murder conspirator, why wait so long after the murder to confuse the time line? If it wasn’t a conspirator, why go to all the trouble to fake out Mrs. Ford, and why? Unless Mrs. Ford was completely confused or mistaken about who she spoke to.
On the other hand, if you’re going to kill Thelma Todd, you would have to have known what time she would be home, and that she would be alone. Who’s waiting around for her at 3 a.m.? And why go to all the trouble of knocking her out, putting her in the car, closing the doors, waiting for the asphyxiation and then going back into the garage to turn off the engine?
You couldn’t invent a better mystery.
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I believe the mystery couple is ZaSu Pitts and her second husband, John E. Woodall.
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That’s Zasu and Pat di Cicco, but I think we already established that. Someone on Usenet once said that, if you want to start a huge flame war, go to a classic film forum and ask how Zasu’s name was pronounced.
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