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I'm Kate Winkler Dawson.

I'm a journalist who's spent the last 25 years writing about true crime.

And I'm Paul Holes, a retired cold case investigator who's worked some of America's most complicated cases and solved them.

Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most compelling true crimes.

And I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring new insights to old mysteries.

Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime cases through a 21st century lens.

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This is Buried Bones.

Hey, Paul.

Hey, Kate.

How are you?

I'm doing well.

I know I left you hanging with Thelma Todd, the very talented Thelma Todd, the Hollywood actress.

Do you want to give us a little bit of a recap since I know it's been a week for some of our viewers and our listeners?

Yeah, you know, from what I remember and what stood out to me in the first episode on this case, Thelma Todd was a young actress, actually very accomplished actress, lived in an apartment above a restaurant that she owned with a lover who happened to also be married to another woman.

So there was a little bit of a lover's triangle within Thelma's life.

And this lover, Roland, who is a, he was a director or an executive, right?

He was a director, film director.

Film director, has this beautiful house up a very steep hill in the Pacific Palisades.

Thelma goes out on a Saturday night, and I don't think we discuss the details of what she did that night.

However, her housekeeper, May, ended up Monday morning looking for Thelma and found Thelma slumped in the driver's side of her car in the garage of Roland's house.

Autopsy indicated she had a fractured nose, she had some bleeding out of the mouth, and she had carbon monoxide poisoning.

And that's where we left off.

You got it.

We've got now a whole host of, I think, very confusing information.

So the first half was really establishing, you know, her death.

And I don't think we have any clear indication of time of death.

We've got two doctors saying two different things.

And we do know there is this weird, it's hard to know if it's a lover's triangle because it was just so vague

between them all.

And then, you know, we've got Thelma, who I think one of the question marks was, is this suicide?

Is this something else?

So let's start back up with, I had hinted at a couple of things.

One was the threatening of Thelma's life.

So let's start with that.

About 10 months before Thelma died, so this is about February of 1935, she gets two threatening letters in the mail.

They say that she will be harmed or killed unless she pays the letter writer $10,000.

So that's about $229,000 today.

One of the letters, at least one of them, demands that the $10,000 be paid to Abe Lyman, who is an orchestra leader in New York, whom Thelma was once engaged to.

Authorities, of course, say this is ridiculous.

Abe has nothing to do with it.

I mean, why would he name himself in a threatening letter?

But the letters are signed by the Ace of Hearts.

How many stories can we do about these

vague kidnapping rings or whatever?

Now I can't remember the black glove.

I mean, I think we've had the black hand versus the black glove, and now we've got the ace of hearts.

Someone calling himself that same name, the ace of hearts, places several long-distance phone calls to Thelma's cafe, threatening to blow the whole place up.

These are threats that she reported to the police, but they don't think it's credible.

None of this stuff is credible.

And ultimately, the police track the threats to two men based in New York, at least one of whom appears to have some kind of a psychiatric illness.

And this is a long time ago, but I just want to throw that out there.

And it's a reminder of when I said police were really investigating these threats.

She is a Hollywood actress, a very well-known one.

So she is getting a lot of attention.

And this story, which probably would have been written off if she were a quote unquote normal person as an accident or a suicide is being seriously investigated as foul play because of her status.

No, you know, and this is, you know, part of the celebrity lifestyle that people probably

underappreciate in terms of the nut jobs that are out there.

You know, they start obsessing.

Yeah.

And they want attention and want,

you know, something back, whether it's positive or even negative.

It's basically they just want something.

I actually interviewed Eva LaRue,

who was being stalked online.

She was an actress out of CSI, Miami, and other things.

And ultimately, my partner on Golden State Killer, Steve Kramer, and his agent, buddy, Steve Bush, utilizing one of the stamps on the letters, threatening letters that had been sent in, were able to use genealogy and identify her stalker.

And he's just some random guy out, I believe it was in Ohio, living with his mom, sitting in a basement, you know, threatening Eva and her daughter over the course of, you know, like 15 years.

Oh my gosh.

Are you serious?

Yeah.

You know, and it's just, that's part of when you have that national level exposure.

You know, you do get those crazies that will do that.

So right now, these two letters plus the threatening phone calls in to Thelma, which are about 10 months prior to her death, it looks like.

Yep.

It sounds like authorities are just saying it's one of these nut jobs.

And

these individuals have no connection to Thelma out in L.A.

at the time of her death.

That's what it sounds like, right?

Yeah, they dismiss these two folks.

It was just, like I said, another reminder to me also about the threat that these stars are under, you know, constantly.

I told you in the last episode about my interview with Marsha Clark.

And one of the things I brought up to her was she was on my radar before OJ because she had prosecuted the case against the killer of Rebecca Schaefer, you know, the actress.

To me, when she was murdered, she was on a big TV series at the time.

She was sort of that definition of the quote-unquote perfect victim, you know, beautiful Hollywood actress, very humble.

She's murdered by a stalker.

And that shook me, that case.

Do you remember much about the Rebecca Schaefer case?

No, I do.

You know, and of course, she just answers a knock on her door.

Yeah.

And the offender shoots her.

He was somebody who had, he had obsessed about her.

And at select points, I believe he had reached out to her, didn't get any response.

He ended up stalking other.

female actresses, but then went back and focused on Rebecca Schaefer and then ultimately, you know, showed up at her front door and just shot her, just killed her.

It's so tragic when you think about it.

Here's this young woman whose career is taking off and, you know, she's got this, just what would probably be an amazing life in front of her.

And just to have some random nutjob show up and kill you, you know,

that's always this risk of when you end up seeking that fame and fortune, will you draw the attention of people that you may not want their attention?

Yeah.

Well, luckily, it sounds like for Thelma, these letters stopped.

You know, they connected it.

It was done.

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So let's get back to our current timeline.

So now I want to talk about the details.

We are on Saturday night.

It is Saturday night, December 14th.

This is the last time people see her.

So about 36 hours before May finds Thelma.

She is at her restaurant, at the cafe working.

She leaves around 8 o'clock.

She's going to a dinner in her honor because of these new films that she's doing at the Trocadero nightclub in Hollywood.

There's this dinner that's in her honor because of the films that she's been doing.

Roland, the boyfriend, is there, but he left before Thelma.

So they kind of crossed paths.

And on his way out, he reportedly told Thelma he wants her home by 2 a.m.

like a dad, be home by 2 a.m.

And she joked back that she'd be back at 2.05.

If you're paying attention to those very last moments where at least publicly they were seen together, it was like playful flirting humor kind of thing.

That was the impression that I got.

Yeah, so they're not hiding their relationship.

No, no.

I mean, I think everybody knows about it, but they also know that while Jewel and Roland are legally married, there seemed to be an actual separation there.

So again, this is not splashed all over the gossip columns.

And this is Hearst Media Times.

So, you know, there's yellow journalism.

It's just not, that's not really part of this.

So I told you that the car was back up at the house, at Roland's house.

So Thelma had a driver drop her back off at the cafe at three in the morning.

She had sort of requested friends to see her at the cafe Sunday.

Like she had joked, let's see how many of you guys actually drag yourself into my cafe on Sunday.

And, you know, they took that as an invitation.

So they were going to plan to go.

So she's at the cafe all the time.

I mean, she left at 8 p.m.

And then she had her driver drop her back off at 3 in the morning after her night out.

She is

realizing that she didn't bring her key with her to get into the cafe, but she knows that Roland is home in the apartment above the cafe because he said, I'm going home.

But it's also believed, Roland says that Jewel, and Jule says too, Jule was there too.

So this is where things get kind of mushy and confusing.

For whatever reason, Thelma goes into the apartment where Roland is and she doesn't wake up Roland.

And Roland said that this was something that was really common, that he woke up really easily.

And she, I don't think she was scared to wake him up, but she was, I think that might be the whole separate bedroom issue.

But Jewel was with him at the time, and maybe that's why maybe she didn't want to wake him up either.

It sounds like a very odd relationship, but at the same time, it seemed kind of normalized in this time period.

The police initially believe that she climbed the 250 stairs from the restaurant up the hill to Roland's house.

She doesn't have a key to his house either.

And she gets into the garage and sits in her car.

And the police at this time had believed that she let herself into the garage, not through the garage door, but there's like a side door that was open.

She got in her car, she turned on the ignition and fell asleep with the door closed.

And a night watchman was scheduled to pass by about six o'clock in the morning.

And the police, I don't know if I believe this, the police think that Thelma might have fallen asleep waiting for him.

They also believe she was pretty inebriated through all of this.

So what do you think of all that?

I know that was a lot of information all at once.

So they're getting information from the driver that he

did drop her off at the cafe, the apartment at 3 a.m.

in the morning.

And

is there any suspicion on the driver at all?

No, no suspicion on the driver.

And then with this idea that she went into,

she went into Roland's room.

I think the insinuation was this, that she didn't have a key for the cafe.

She didn't have a key maybe for the apartment above also.

She didn't want to knock on the door to wake him up.

And so she decided to walk up 250 steps at four in the morning, drunk.

most likely to get into a house where she doesn't have a key up there either.

The only place she actually can succeed in getting into is inside the garage.

And then the idea is that she would turn on the car with the garage door closed to wait for a night watchman.

I don't know why none of that makes sense to me, but maybe it does to you.

Well, I'm just wondering, this is, you know, mid-December.

And even though it's, you know, we're talking LA Pacific Palisades, you know, maybe it's chilly.

And, you know, one of the questions that I have about this 1935 Lincoln Phaeton car is, does it have heat?

Which you have turned the car on in order just to have some heat.

You know, in order to get the heat, you need to have the engine running to heat up the coolant that goes through the heater core, you know, and then the fans blow through the heater core to generate heat.

And she just doesn't recognize that a running car inside a closed environment is dangerous, you know, with the carbon monoxide.

You know, that's one thing.

If this car had was a source of heat, maybe that's why she turned it on inside the garage and why she went up.

Though it seems like

she was inside the cafe to get to the apartment.

So, why does she leave to go all the way up those steps to ultimately just get into her car?

Right.

If she's so inebriated, you know, judgment is impaired, you know, and she may not be thinking right.

Maybe she's thinking, okay, well, Roland and Jules are down at the apartment.

I'm just going to get up to the house and stay up there, you know, and crawl into a bed up there.

And then she gets all the way up there and realizes, oh, I can't get in.

So here's the other side of that.

There is no way that woman went to a fancy Spancy event in her honor at that place, at that, you know, restaurant with all of those people glammed out.

What kind of shoes do you think she was wearing?

Oh, she's, she's going to be decked out.

You know, she has a, you know, an image, a brand that she has to maintain.

Yeah, heels.

She's not walking up 250 steps in heels at four in the morning, cold.

I mean, there's no way.

So May will say there's going to be a coroner's inquest that I'll tell you about.

And May will say at this coroner's inquest, she hated that.

She never wanted to go up that hill.

Somebody took her up there.

Okay.

And the chauffeur says it wasn't me.

So she vanishes after he drops her off.

And they alibied him.

And, you know, nobody suspected him.

But

that is, I think, the big issue here is the chauffeur says she wasn't drunk.

She was sober.

Roland said, it would have been like her to not knock on the door and wake him up if he didn't have a key.

She had done that before when he was there.

And she ends up throwing a rock through the bedroom window, which I'm sure he didn't appreciate.

But then when she would lock herself out, other times she would just go to her mom's.

Now, I don't know if that meant she would get in her car and drive to her mom's or if she would call the chauffeur back, but that's not what happened.

She didn't contact her mom.

So the last thing we know is this driver drops her off at the cafe.

She's locked out there.

She's locked out of Roland's apartment.

She's supposedly in heels and a mink and everything else climbs up 250 stairs.

And now's probably, Paul, a good time for you to look at those maps.

Okay.

And, you know, one question I have is when her body's found, is she wearing heels?

I didn't see a note about that.

I want you to look at this and you tell me what you think

if she walked up this

spot with no heels on?

Because she's wearing hose, I'm sure, too.

Sorry, it's 270 steps, according to this newspaper.

So go to pages three and four and kind of describe when you can what you think.

You know, the first image is an actual photograph of the front, the storefront of the cafe.

It's a bigger building than what I was expecting.

You know, it's right there, right off the side of the road.

There's parkings.

There's several vehicles that are pulled up into parking spots, you know, nose into the front of this building.

There's a label indicating where the sidewalk cafe was, which is that Thelma's cafe because it also says the Joya Cafe above that.

Is that one and the same?

It's a sidewalk cafe.

And the Joya or whatever that is must just be a separate business.

Hers is that whole bottom section.

That's huge.

Yeah, no, that's a good-sized cafe.

And then there's a label pointing to on the right side of the photograph, which is the kind of

a multi-story part of this storefront, whether it be the second or the third floor, the label indicates that's where Thelma Todd's apartment was at.

And then there's some dotted lines, which I, it's hard in this photograph to be able to determine exactly what those dotted lines are marking.

But I think those dotted lines are marking the kind of the steps.

Oh, no, I see.

It's confusing.

If you look at the the second one, you'll see there's two sets of steps, but they're almost separated by what, I mean, this looks like a hole.

This woman is not doing this, I don't think, in heels at four in the morning.

Okay, so there's two, two sets of steps, and then you have the steps go up to what appears to be one road.

You cross that road, and then you go up a second series of steps to get to the house.

And those steps, basically, it's like two separate sets of steps, but they're straight per this this sketch on the second page that you just sent me.

And yeah, you know, this is a, this looks like a significant distance.

You know, this is, this is a situation.

It's hard to discern from the photograph and the sketch sort of the spatial aspects of what we're looking at.

And 270 steps is a lot.

You know, you think about like a

floor.

you know, you're looking about 12 steps in a residential dwelling to get from, you know, like my basement up the main floor, 12 to 15 steps.

And so when you're starting to talk about 270 steps, I mean, you're going up, I don't know,

20 floors, 20, 20, 25 floors, maybe.

So obviously, this would be a rigorous activity.

So I could see where there would be some concerns about Thelma doing these steps in heels.

I would think she would take her heels off in order to do that.

Secondly, her heart condition, you know, whatever that is, you know, does the heart condition

prevent her from doing this type of physical exertion?

But then there's the victimology.

May is saying there's no way she would ever have done that.

Yep.

So if she did not walk up the steps, how does she get up to the house?

You know, I know this

chauffeur is not of concern.

I'm just,

you know, it's like, well, he's the last one who saw her alive.

Right.

Right.

It's like, okay, so how did they eliminate him?

This October, we're doing something very different.

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so now we got to talk about witnesses because there were people who say they saw her or talked to her on sunday and you know the last time he saw her was when he dropped her off sunday at 3 a.m

so let me tell you what people said and

jewel Corman, her boyfriend's wife, says that she saw her too on Sunday.

So here's what everyone says.

Three people report information to the police that, if true, would have required Thelma to be alive on Sunday, not dead Saturday night/slash Sunday morning.

So, you know, the time of death thing is becoming more interesting.

One is named Martha Ford.

She's a friend of Thelma's, and she said they spoke on the phone on Sunday.

Thelma had been invited to a cocktail party at Ms.

Ford's residence in Laurel Canyon.

Martha says that Thelma called her at 4 p.m.

So this is like the 12-hour timeline that we're talking about, that the initial doctor said, saying that she was on her way to this party and that she was going to bring a friend along with her.

She did not show up, obviously, to the cocktail party.

And they had the ability to trace phone calls and they could not find evidence of that phone call from Martha Ford.

Okay.

So that's witness one, sketchy witness number one.

Do you want to stop there or do you want me to keep going or what do you think?

No, keep going.

I kind of want the whole picture on these witnesses.

Okay.

The next one is a waiter who is not someone who's named.

I presume he didn't testify in front of the coroner's inquest.

He was at a different cafe, not her cafe, on Hollywood Boulevard.

And he tells police he saw Thelma, who would have been,

she would have stuck out like a sore thumb, obviously.

He saw her drive past the cafe on Hollywood Boulevard at 2 p.m.

on Sunday.

So two hours before, you know, she was supposed to be talking to Martha Ford.

And then kind of the last one is after Thelma's death, a few days later on Wednesday.

So Thelma was found on a Monday morning.

This is now Jewel.

And Jewel, two days later, says she saw Thelma driving somewhere in her car in Hollywood on Sunday.

She says that she was with a dark complexioned man.

And Jewel later clarifies she can't be certain.

She saw Thelma, but it was definitely a chocolate brown Lincoln car, which looked identical to Thelma's car.

I don't know what's happening.

I mean, I guess take the both ways, either that Jewel is not involved because there's nothing to be involved with and this was an accident, or something really sketchy is happening.

What would Jewel be trying to do in both of those circumstances?

Well, the waiter and Jewel, is the victim the one actually driving her own car?

Is that their statement?

Well, it sounds like, yes, that she, and she had driven her own car.

Sometimes she would have a chauffeur, sometimes she wouldn't.

So, yes, and that she was driving with a dark-complexioned man, very vague.

From Jewel's statement, I don't know if she was suggesting that the man was driving the car, but she just said she saw Thelma.

So the first witness, Martha Ford, who is a friend,

spoke on the phone at 4 p.m.

on Sunday.

I know you said that they had the capability to trace phone calls and there is no evidence that that phone call ever occurred.

So they say they found no record of any phone call made between Martha and Thelma's cafe

or Martha and Thelma's home, so the apartment.

But I would assume they would run that same thing on Roland's house or maybe she used a payphone.

I don't know what she would have used, but those were the two that they looked at.

If you have the waiter and he's accurate in his statement saying he saw Thelma drive past his cafe on Hollywood Boulevard at 2 p.m.,

and then Martha is now saying that Thelma spoke with her on the phone at 4 p.m., it's possible that Thelma is not at any of her known locations.

She's out and about.

Now, one of the things I don't know is, you know, 1935, you know, phone records, you know, like billing records and stuff like that, you know, how much they stayed on top of local phone calls.

You know, I know, you know, going back, you know, it's now decades later in the 1970s that, you know, trying to trace a phone call, let's say like an active phone call,

it's, it's a very labor-intensive, quick-moving process within the phone facility itself.

You know, you got all sorts of relays that they have to end up tracking down while that phone call is going on.

That's why this whole thing back in the day is that the person on the phone that's issuing threats and you're trying to trace that phone call, there's a clock that's ticking because when they hang up, boom, these relays just reset.

And now you've lost sort of the phone, the originating phone number where that phone call came in from.

So I'm kind of wondering how in the 1930s they

tracked phone calls, you know, and I'm getting down to, okay, if they're saying that there's no record of a phone call between Thelma and Martha,

and I'm assuming Martha said she called Thelma or she was home and Thelma called her, you know, it's one or the other.

So they would have the, you know, who's the originator of the phone call, you know, how much veracity to put on the investigator's information.

And I don't know right now.

Yeah.

That's a big question, Mark.

are they right and there is no phone call?

Or is it very possible there was a phone call and they just didn't look in the right place, you know, within the phone tracking system.

So that's something that I'm chewing on.

This waiter, the waiter is not an associate of the victim.

Right.

Just recognizes the victim.

And this is a high-profile case.

You know, so there's, you know, there is always going to be that question mark of, is the waiter just trying to be helpful, read something in the newspaper, and maybe mistaken identity.

You'd think that Thelma's car, you know, would be somewhat unusual.

But again, you have a lot of wealthy people that live in this area.

So maybe it's not as unusual as I'm assuming.

And then Jewel, Jul's the one that's

interesting.

You know, my concern with Jewel, of course, is even though it appears that this triangle between her and Roland and Thelma is all out in the open and all on the up and up, you know, if she's calling in and is trying to place Thelma with some unknown man,

you know, is she trying to drive a wedge between Thelma and Roland, you know, or is she just being honest?

And again, I don't know.

It's all very interesting because you have three different people saying they saw Thelma on Sunday.

Yet Thelma is found in the clothes that she went to the dinner from Saturday.

And you have a chauffeur saying he dropped her off at the cafe.

And this isn't like Uber Paul.

I mean, this was her regular driver who was on call all the time for her.

And he's just pushing her out of the car and driving away.

Well, she did not know she didn't have a key until after she got to the door and she realized she left everything at home.

And I'm assuming he was gone already and she can't make a phone call.

So, you know, she went up to the apartment.

I had kind of wondered if Jewel was there, which has been insinuated.

And she did knock on the door and Jewel answered.

And maybe that's how she caught a ride up there.

But of course, Jule's not copying to anything.

I don't know.

I just don't trust Jule.

I don't understand any of this.

Why would she let somebody, I mean, there's investments everywhere and it's it's just seems like an odd relationship.

No, no, I think that, you know, the oddity of the relationship is concerning.

You know, I think I want more information about the normal routine that the chauffeur does.

You know, I can only imagine that the chauffeur, he's not just pulling up and, okay, good night or, you know, whatever.

This sounds for somebody of Thelma's status, this sounds like a professional driver that likely would escort Thelma to the door or, you know, help her get out of the car.

You know, what is the normal routine?

And of course, I know you probably don't have that information.

You know, so on one hand, the autopsy results and her being found slumped in the front seat of her own vehicle inside a closed garage with carbon monoxide poisoning, you know, that suggests accidental.

But I can see where there's some concern just because there seems to be other suspicious activity going on.

There's churn.

And

now it does come down to, okay, what is the likely time of death?

Can we eliminate these three witnesses on Sunday if we can say that Thelma was truly dead 30 hours versus 12?

I think that it becomes very complicated because there's so much more information.

So the chauffeur's name is Ernest Peters,

and he said that she seemed scared.

And I was not going to bring this up until now.

Thelma had, and this was a theory that, you know, the police claim they went down this road, but we'll see.

She had apparently had a recent altercation with her ex-husband.

who had ties to mobsters.

And there began to be speculation, and the chauffeur kind of backs this up, that her ex-husband and mobsters that have been floating around, you know, this area and in her circle were pressuring her to use the cafe in gambling.

And that this could have been connected to that somehow.

And so the chauffeur says, you know, she had sketchy people around.

He testified at, you know, what would sue being the coroner's inquest.

And that he, you know, just said she was scared of her ex-husband and that there had been recent issues between the two of them.

But he said, you know, he put her at the cafe.

There's a spot where it's in front of the cafe and also in front of a tiny set of steps that I think you see in one of the maps that go up to her apartment.

I guess it's not tiny, but it's a short set of steps.

So he doesn't particularly know which way she went at that point.

And then, you know, there's information about the mob tie stuff.

Well, you know, it does, it does boil down to, you know, I kind of go back to the fractured nose a little bit.

Yeah.

So

you have the

theory that she succumbs to carbon monoxide poisoning.

She slumps forward, hits her nose against the steering wheel.

And I'm not doubting that that could potentially fracture, but it would be a very minor.

God, I remember playing basketball as a kid, and I'd have that basketball rebound off the rim and just slam into my nose.

And that would be a hell of a lot more force than my head just kind of slumping forward into a steering wheel.

And I never broke my nose.

You know, some boys had their noses broken by a basketball's, right?

So this is where, you know, evaluating, okay, the level of damage to her nose, I think, is part of what I would be looking into.

You know, and where the bleeding is coming out of her mouth.

I mean,

is her upper palate to her oral cavity, you know, roof of her mouth, is that fractured as a result of this fractured nose?

Or

is the blood from the mouth just a result of blood, you know, kind of dripping down from the nasal cavity into the oral cavity?

You know, these are observations they need to be making at autopsy or should have made at autopsy.

Because, I mean, if her nose is crushed in and her upper palate is fractured, then I would say that's not from her slumping forward.

You know, somebody punched her in the nose or similar.

So

I think like for me to start resolving, you know, the circumstances and the suspicions and the theories is it's going back to the core.

It's going back to what does the crime scene say?

What does the autopsy say?

Can I see something that indicates or let's say either corroborates or refutes the theory that this was just an accidental carbon monoxide poisoning.

Let me tell you a little bit more because I'm not going to have those details, unfortunately, just about, I wish we had more

on the autopsy.

But let me just tell you a little bit more about the ex, and I don't know if it's going to go anywhere or not.

So, three years, not very long ago, before she died, she married a guy named Pat DeChico.

He's an agent and a producer who has alleged ties to mobster Lucky Luciano.

And they divorce two years later.

You know, they were married just for two years.

Now they're divorced a year before she dies.

During their marriage, they have absolutely awful arguments, very like violent.

It sounds like Pat is abusive and he hurts Thelma on multiple occasions.

He breaks her nose.

And she had been the one to file for divorce, saying that he was cruel.

Still, really weird side note, Pat DiChico went on to marry Gloria Vanderbilt in 1941.

And she was only 17 when they got married, and she said he was extremely abusive.

So the running theory is about the mob that she got drawn into this world because the ex-husband, who has only been an ex-husband for a year, was involved.

And that this would have been fairly common.

And Roland West could have been involved too.

I mean, he was a film director.

The intertwining between a lot of Hollywood and the mob was pretty tight in this time period.

So, you know, that is not out of the realm, but you're right.

Again, it's like the details of the autopsy, you know, may or may not have told us more information.

I just think all of these circumstances are so weird.

I am so bothered that no one is copying to taking her up to the top of this hill.

Yeah.

You know, and then all these things that are happening.

So if she is alive on Sunday, why is she found dead Monday morning in the same clothes that she wore Saturday night?

How does that make sense?

Well, you know, a scenario, let's say she ends up meeting with somebody after she gets dropped off by the chauffeur.

And maybe this is a consensual relationship, or maybe she is truly under threat,

but never ends up going back home in order to change the next day.

This ex-husband, Pat,

is he a darkly complexed guy?

Here's the two of them together.

Hold on.

He looks like he could be darker.

He looks olive-skinned to me.

Oh, yeah.

Is that surname like Italian?

Yeah, I believe so.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because he looks, yeah, the thick eyebrows looks like he has the, you know, full dark head of hair.

But would she really not know who her current husband's girlfriend's ex-husband would be?

I mean, I don't know.

Yeah, you know, that's Jules' statements.

you know, is she intentionally being vague or does she not get a good look?

Or is there an associate of, you know, a mob associate of this Pat DeCheco that's now abducted?

You know, this is where when

I start evaluating the circumstances of how Thelma died.

And if there's an organization like the mob involved, one of the things that I would be doing is reaching out to the experts who have investigated mob homicides and find out, do we have instances

of mob connections with a similar type of staged crime scene where they, in essence, get the victim to succumb to carbon monoxide?

You know, again, the fractured nose, let's say, could that have been a punch?

Could that have been a significant enough punch to where Thelma is

dazed and she's, in essence put inside this running vehicle inside a closed garage.

She has to be breathing.

It's not like she's dead and then this is staged to look like carbon monoxide.

She has to be ingesting the carbon monoxide by breathing.

So she's still alive inside that garage and taking in the carbon monoxide.

The critical aspect is really assessing the one injury she has.

What is the level of violence?

Is it consistent with just a mere slump?

Or is there a greater force being applied?

And I would say, if there's a greater force being applied and then the blood flows, the blood patterns, does that indicate that there's something suspicious going on?

If there is, if this fractured nose is significant, I think that aspect in and of itself would push this case from an accidental finding to at least an an indeterminate finding in terms of manner of death, death by the hands of another type of scenario.

So 1935, you know, it's possible that they did some photography at the crime scene in the morgue.

Pathologists should have written a report, you know, so I'd be interested in getting into the nitty-gritty details of what the pathologist actually found.

Okay, hang on.

I think I found a photo.

So this is a photo of her on the autopsy slab.

This is from the book Tragic Hollywood, Beautiful, Glamorous, and Still Dead.

When cops arrived, they knew

they were dealing with a person of means.

She was extremely well dressed.

The gown, full-length mahogany mink coat, lots of diamonds, expensive rings.

Just as a reminder, if we're looking at the mob connection, she had a lot of jewelry,

rosy, you know, cheeks.

There was no trace, there were no traces of bruising around her neck, and her nose was not broken, even though it looked like it had been.

And it says it has erroneously reported.

She did have a loose filling and a slightly bloody lip.

A dying camellia was pinned to her party dress.

The withering flower had lost its pure white color and was turning pink.

Let me go ahead and share this.

So this is saying her nose was not fractured.

Well, I mean, and that's what the doctor had said initially, but then there were these, all of these other reports, you know, so.

Yeah, well, she's obviously, so I'm looking at, you know, a picture of Thelma she's she's laying on her back she's got the typical neck rest that's used at autopsy that's behind her head you know her upper body is is completely covered so all I can see is pretty much from the the jaw up to the top of her head and her hair I can't tell if she's been autopsied at this point you know her hair may be may be covering up any incisions to her scalp sometimes there's there's deformation to the forehead, which there may be in this case, but

the nose looks pristine.

It does not appear that her nose was fractured.

There is just a slight discoloration on what appears to possibly be her lower lip.

You know, if this is all the damage to her face, then I would say, you know what?

That laceration to her lip, if that's what that is, that's completely consistent with her slumping forward and hitting her mouth on the steering wheel.

How'd she get up there?

Yeah,

there's definitely mysteries in terms of her movements, you know, the timeline.

Wait, is this her?

Yeah, that might be her in the vehicle.

Yeah, mink coat.

That's her.

At least at the time of this photo, she slumped to her right.

And so they've opened up the front passenger door and have taken a photo with her laying there.

I wonder if that's the position that she was actually found in.

But I think the bottom photo is potentially reversed.

Yeah, I think you might be right.

Maybe people can see it better or something.

You know, sometimes it's the way they develop the prints from negatives and they don't they don't account for the directionality.

So, I mean, it appears that she's

in the middle of the front seat based on the position.

If I'm looking at the top photo right, it looks like she's got this long mink coat on and she's sitting on the bottom, or she was sitting on the bottom of it.

And then she ends up collapsing to her left.

But where what I'm assuming is

where her butt is, that looks like it's towards the middle of the front seat of this vehicle.

It doesn't look violent to me.

And there's no space.

I mean, look at it.

It looks pretty tight to me.

If she were sitting up, she's pretty close to the steering wheel and that looks like an imposing steering wheel.

I could see how that would knock her tooth loose.

Yeah, you know, potentially, but there, you know, this dashboard, there's other features in front of her that if she were to collapse forward, she doesn't necessarily have to collapse into the steering wheel.

Like where it appears that she is sitting, it's possible that she just collapsed and hit the front dash.

But we also have to consider that as she's succumbing to carbon monoxide, it's not like it's just you're completely lucid one moment and then you're done the next moment.

There's a process.

It's possible that as she is losing awareness, coming to carbon monoxide, she's moving around, right?

Yeah.

So it's hard to say exactly how she positioned, purposely positioned herself inside this vehicle.

But right now, I mean, her nose is not fractured.

If there's any, I can't see any blood in these photos, but I don't doubt that maybe there's some blood from a minor lip laceration.

Right.

But this is not, there doesn't have, there's no evidence of violence being inflicted on her.

So at least from a crime scene and an autopsy standpoint, it's really tough to draw a conclusion that somebody did this to her.

Now, it's possible, you know, but I, right now, I am now leaning back towards this is accidental.

She succumbed to carbon monoxide poisoning.

And, you know, the mystery is, well, how did she get up there and why did she go up there?

But I think if she's just like, well, I'm locked out down here at the cafe in the apartment, I'm going to go up and see if I can get into the house.

And she can't get into the house, but she can get into the garage and it's cold and she turns the vehicle on.

Right now, I think that that's the most compelling theory out there.

This is another angle, but I don't know how helpful.

It's an above angle.

Yeah.

So, and that's that's showing that that other photo was reversed.

So this photo is accurate in in that it shows that she fell to her left and her head is on the driver's seat and the driver's door is open with the gentleman who may be an investigator, maybe a representative from the coroner's office is standing above her.

Not wearing gloves.

No.

Which 40 years later, they weren't wearing gloves.

So this is not surprising at all.

Okay.

Well, that's good.

Let me see if there's anything else oh i don't know what this is oh i think they're taking her body out is that a body bag kind of thing

yeah it looks like yeah she's got they got her wrapped you know when all is said and done about what we've talked about yeah you know at this point unless something compelling came up

you know if the coroners ruled this as accidental carbon monoxide poisoning, I don't have a problem with that.

I think her celebrity status and some of the, you you know, the strange relationships and mob connections and death threats and all of that, that's all very interesting.

But fundamentally, to be able to say that somebody came in and killed her,

the evidence just isn't there with what I've seen.

I agree, man.

I'm going to give a lot of credit to Tragic Hollywood.

If anybody wants to look at some more of these photos and just some wonderful photos of her on the set.

Yeah, what a, I mean, just a 29-year-old actress who is working so hard.

And, you know, she's got this cafe and she's obviously planning for the future.

And I don't know how she got up there.

Maybe the chauffeur turned around and gave her a ride and just for some reason didn't want to say anything about it.

Who knows?

But this really doesn't, you know, the coroner said these were mild.

This does not look like she was in a fight in any way.

But with so many weird circumstances, her not wanting to walk up the steps, you know, her heart condition, three or four in the morning.

It's cold outside.

All of this stuff just added up to really suspiciousness, I think, for everybody involved.

So let me just wrap this up.

The coroner's jury ruled that the death appeared accidental, but that it needed to be further investigated.

They wanted somebody to take a closer look at the organs for more conclusive evidence, ruling out foul play.

I don't know what, what do you think they were thinking?

70 to 80% saturation of carbon monoxide seems pretty conclusive to me.

I mean, what were they thinking they would find in there?

You know, I'd wonder if there had been, let's say, some punches to her abdomen, which you're not necessarily going to see much on, you know, this compressible part of

the body, but some of these internal organs may demonstrate some hemorrhaging or some tissue damage, particularly the liver.

That's the only thing I can really think of, you know, and

her state of intoxication

would be important.

And in 1935,

I'm not sure outside of the pathologist, once he cuts into the body and goes, whoa, there's a lot of ethanol

on board.

I'm not sure what they were doing in terms of measuring the amount of alcohol somebody had on board.

And 1935,

celebrity actress,

is she abusing barbiturates?

Is she abusing

other recreational drugs at the time?

So that could also lead to this kind of mental state to where she is now wandering up the hill, you know, stumbling up the hill, you know, to get to the house where

she's doing something that she normally wouldn't do.

Yeah.

There are media reports, just in case anybody goes digging around in this story, there were some media reports that there was blood found in Roland and Thelma's apartment.

But I mean, those were just media reports, Hearst, yellow journalism stuff, and the police never reported any of that.

And then, you know, of course, what's always going to come back is she will not have made that climb up those steps, but never say never.

Right.

I mean, really, if you're motivated,

just never say never.

I mean, you can't, we can't say conclusively.

It's unlikely.

And I know you talk about that with victimology.

It's unlikely, but it doesn't mean that one night she didn't decide to do that.

There is a grand jury that convenes on the case for about a month.

The grand jury foreman is a guy named George Rochester, and he's kind of our grandstander is what everybody thinks.

Even though they already have clear evidence from the autopsy that there's carbon monoxide poisoning, he is insisting that the county chemist analyze her organs for signs of poisoning.

They do, and the report is delayed for about a month, but there's nothing.

And wouldn't you think recreational drugs would have popped up on that kind of a report also?

You know, this is,

you know, this is an era in which labs' ability to screen for a broad number of substances all at once just didn't exist.

They needed to be able to have an idea on what to look for and then utilize the analytical tools they could to specifically look for maybe a class of compounds if they're lucky.

Like there's different types of barbs out there.

But generally, I would say that unless they had an idea of what she was recreationally using, it's very possible that they would have missed whatever was in her system.

Yeah.

You know, I was thinking, I've done cases before where there was a big question of whether or not there was a suicide, specifically one in the 1930s around the corner from my house that I did for a Tenfold More Wicked, where there was a young man and he left the car running.

And it was 1935.

He left the car running in the garage.

And he said, well, I didn't even realize it was running.

And, you know, I talked to somebody that said, no, you would realize it's running.

It's loud.

It's not a soft engine or anything.

But, you know, I was thinking, how well educated were they in 1935?

Do not close the door, turn on your engine, and let it run.

I don't know.

I do know that in 2021, when we had in Austin just the most horrific set of snowstorms we've ever had, that's paralyzed the city and it killed a lot of people.

And, you know, we were not prepared because we don't get snow down here.

You know, our pipes are close to the surface.

Our electrical lines are above ground.

And we, you know, we're just not meant, we're not built for that.

There were a lot of people, Paul, who would run little generators in the house.

They were burning lacquered furniture in the house because they didn't know.

We didn't know that that's what you're supposed to do.

I did not, thank goodness.

But so I was just thinking, like, is she likely to know this is a bad idea?

The chauffeur is insisting she wasn't drunk and her friends are not saying she was drunk.

So I don't know.

Otherwise,

what is the answer?

There's no visible injuries really on her.

If somebody locked her in the car and then turned on the gas, she would have been scraping and clawing and breaking glass and trying to get out.

It just doesn't make sense unless she truly didn't know that this was a bad idea trying to get worn this way.

And I lean probably a majority of the population, particularly back in 1935, probably weren't educated to the dangers of car exhaust and the carbon monoxide poisoning.

So for me, I'm not surprised at all, you know, that she got into a vehicle, turned it on inside an enclosed garage.

And the reason that she turned the vehicle on, from my perspective, is she just wanted to be warm that night.

You know, she's in a mink coat, you know, so that kind of suggests that it was chilly.

I still don't understand all of these eyewitnesses and Martha Ford and all of this.

I don't get it.

Yeah.

I don't get it.

I don't get it.

And she's famous.

This is not just a normal person, a normal, beautiful blonde walking down the street.

But, you know, I think you're right.

If you're, I know you all often will go just back to the physical evidence, not eyewitness testimony.

And victimology is important, but sometimes shit happens and people change up what they're doing.

And you wouldn't expect it, but they do.

But really, there doesn't seem to be any kind of real trauma when you look at it.

So, you know, of course, we'll never know, but this is a pretty big mystery.

This is one of those mysteries in Hollywood.

You know, this is a woman who obviously was working very hard.

She had a lot of promise.

These films are so fun that she put out and she just could have just accelerated.

And, you know, maybe she would get married and, you know, have a lot of things that were fulfilling to her.

And it's just awful that this is the way it sounds like just a lack of knowledge, not knowing anything about this.

I'm sure this did happen often, you know?

Sure.

Well, you know, after this, I think I'm going to have to go and watch something on Thelma Todd.

What did I look at?

That was fun.

There are a bunch of them, but I think it was the Tin Men.

Yeah, it was the Tin Men.

And it was cute.

It was very Lucille.

There's actually on that website, there are some headshots of her with her co-star where they're very Lucy and Ethel before Lucy and Ethel.

So very cool.

I like that.

Yeah, I like telling stories about women.

It's sad, particularly with Thelma Todd, that she died.

But, you know, it's nice to see a woman who has a lot of independence and control.

And it's, it's nice, even though it ends badly.

it's nice to be able to say these women have been here working so hard for so long.

It's just good to see an example of it.

Sure.

Well, I really appreciate you bringing this case to me.

You're welcome.

I can pretty much guarantee we're not talking about Hollywood next week.

Okay.

I am not even pretty much, I can say, definitely we're not going to do another Hollywood story.

It's just about six months off me trying to figure this out, but we will have another compelling case next week.

I'm looking forward to it.

Me too.

Thanks, Paul.

All right.

Thanks, Kate.

This has been an Exactly Right Production.

For our sources and show notes, go to exactlyrightmedia.com/slash buried bones sources.

Our senior producer is Alexis Emorosi.

Research by Maren McClashin, Allie Elkin, and Kate Winkler-Dawson.

Our mixing engineer is Ben Toliday.

Our theme song is by Tom Breifogel.

Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac.

Executive produced by Karen Kilgariff, Georgia Hardstark, and Danielle Kramer.

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Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked: A Gilded Age Story of Murder and the Race to Deco the Criminal Mind, is available now.

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