Louise

In Los Angeles' county jail last week greying, motherly Mrs. Louise Peete Judson began preparing herself for death. When the matron and her fellow prisoners wept for her, she said: "Don't be troubled, my dears. Death is merely an eventuality in all our lives." They were not comforted : she was so nice, so poised, so kind. But throughout her life, death trailed her like the fragrance of the expensive perfume* she used.

People had always liked Louise Peete. In 1919 her soothing manner had attracted a wealthy old Los Angeles oilman named Jacob C. Denton. She leased his house, and agreed to let him stay on in it. Soon she was using his car, paying his bills, handling his business with bankers. On the night of June 1, 1920, after months of happy companionship, Jake Denton disappeared. Weeping, Louise Peete helped police in a fruitless hunt for clues. Then she sadly sublet his house and went to Denver, where, she said, her second husband, one Richard Peete, was divorcing her.

Jake is Home. Mulling over Denton's strange disappearance, detectives had the house searched again. Finally they found a neatly plastered crypt under the basement stairs. In it was Jake Denton's body, shot in the back.

Louise Peete was arrested, charged with murder. She kept her calm assurance. At the trial, she did not testify. An all-male jury was moved to sympathy, even after hearing that she had forged Jake Denton's name on checks. When they convicted her of murder, they recommended a life sentence instead of death.

When husband Richard Peete got the news he committed suicide. (Her first husband had killed himself too, leaving her a widow in her teens.) In San Quentin and Tehachapi prisons Louise Peete was a model prisoner. After 18 years she was paroled. She went back to Los Angeles, got a job as housekeeper for one Jessie Marcy, 60. Mrs. Marcy died. Then she kept house for 70-year-old Emily D Dwight Latham, one of the probation officers who had helped her win her parole. Mrs. Latham died. Each time the police investigated. Each time the verdict was death from natural causes.

Early last year Louise Peete, now middleaged, full-bosomed, and addicted to strange hats, began keeping house in swank Pacific Palisades for mentally-ailing Arthur C. Logan, and his real-estate-broker wife, Margaret. Tremulously, she confided her past to the Logans. Far from firing her, they took her to their hearts. When she married a 67-year-old bank messenger named Lee Borden Jud son, they insisted that she bring him into the family circle.

Journey for Margaret. Soon the circle contracted. Margaret Logan disappeared.

When mild Lee Judson querulously noted that his bride seemed unconcerned, she sweetly replied: "Well, if you must know, Mr. Logan bit Mrs. Logan's nose. She's at a hospital for some plastic surgery." Mrs. Peete remained unperturbed when Arthur Logan was taken off to an insane asylum, where he died.

But one day a bank teller challenged the signature of the vanished Margaret Logan on a check. Police questioned Louise, as they had 24 years before. Detectives searched the house, as they had searched Jake Denton's. The cellar floor was untouched. But near an avocado tree in the backyard they found a mound of earth. Inside was the body of Margaret Logan. She had been shot in the back.

Two weeks later an inquest cleared Louise's husband, but not Louise. Shy little Lee Judson, walked from the hearing straight to a downtown office building, plunged eight floors down a stair well.

Amazing, But . . . Thrice-widowed Louise, once again the defendant at a murder trial, saw the District Attorney slip the Denton trial transcript into evidence against her. She heard him describe the deadly parallel, noted that the jury --eleven women and one man -- appeared to find it amazing but not incredible. This time, Louise decided to testify.

She had a logical story: Arthur Logan had killed his wife in an insane fit; Louise had buried the body because -- she smiled a little cynically -- the world certainly would unite against her in disbelief if she reported the death. She spent four days on the stand. In the county jail, her fellow-prisoners rallied to her support: throughout the six-week trial they kept her hair dyed and waved, tidied her cell, washed her nylons. Halfway through her ordeal they bought her a new spring hat to wear to court. While the jury deliberated, she read Lin Yutang's The Importance of Living.

But once again Louise Peete was convicted of first-degree murder. This time there was no recommendation for mercy. Last week, on the 25th anniversary of Jake Denton's death, Louise Peete was sentenced to her own in California's gas chamber. Back in jail she smiled sadly, told her adoring friends: "It goes without saying ... I have never killed or even harmed a human being. . . . But truth is elusive. . . ."

*Chanel No. 5.

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