Family Weekly
January 24, 1960
THE STRANGE
CASE OF
CARYL
CHESSES AINI
BY EVAN McLEOD WYLIE
1
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"Be on the lookout for a male . . . swarthy com
plexion ... possibly Italian . . . five-feet-four to
five-ten . . . 150-170 pounds . . . thin to medium
build . . . dark brown hair . . '. crooked teeth . . .
narrow nose with slight hump on the bridge of nose
. . . armed with .45 automatic . . . uses small pen
type flashlight . . . believed driving '47 club coupe
...a red spotlight has been seen on side of car..."
It was a few minutes before 8 p.m. Jan. 23, 1947,
a chilly, fog-shrouded night in Los Angeles, Calif.
For weeks, a "Red Light Bandit," impersonating a
policeman in a car with a flashing red spotlight,
had been terrorizing lovers-lane couples parked
on the dark winding canyon roads that overlook
Pasadena's famed Rose Bowl and the glittering
lights of Hollywood. '
Sometimes, after he had examined the couples'
wallets, he flourished a .45 automatic, pocketed
their money, and departed. Other times he affixed
a mask over his face, forced the girl to accompany
him in his car, and brutally assaulted her. Only the
night before, he had held a terrified 17-year-old
girl captive for three hours. Now, as police cars
combed the canyons and hills above Hollywood,
their radios blared forth the bandit's description.
In Car 35, nosing slowly through the congested
streets of downtown Hollywood, police officers
James Reardon and Robert May suddenly spotted -a
Ford coupe matching the description of the ban
dit's car and signaled it to pull over. Instead, the -Ford
was off like a shot As Reardon tramped hard
on the accelerator, May, fumbling for his gun,
flicked a dashboard button and flashed a radio mes
sage: "We are in pursuit of a Ford '47 coupe head
ing south on Vermont Avenue at very high speed."
Within a few moments, a dozen police cars con
verged on Vermont Avenue to cut off the coupe.
Zigzagging wildly through heavy traffic at 80
miles per hour, -bullets from May's gun smashing
into its rear window, the Ford charged recklessly
through one road block and was about to evade
another with a tire-screeching U turn when a
broadside ram from Reardon brought it to a halt.
Their prisoner was a 27-year-old man named Caryl
Chessman.
By the next morning, Hollywood police had accu
mulated enough evidence to link Chessman directly
to the crimes of the Red Light Bandit The Ford
coupe had been stolen in Pasadena one month be
fore about the same time that the Red Light Bandit
had begun to prey on the lovers-lane couples. In its
glove compartment was found a pen-type flashlight
On the ground near the car was a .45 automatic.
Except for his height (six feet) and lack of an
Italian accent, Chessman fitted the description of
the bandit Many of the victims identified him.
Within 48 hours, police announced that they had
obtained Chessman's oral confession and that
the case was solved. But, brought to trial a few
weeks later, Chessman denied emphatically that
he was the Red Light Bandit He-insisted he was
the victim of coincidence, mistaken identity,- and
a police frame-up, that detectives had tricked and
beaten him into confessing the crimes. "
Cocky and self-confident, he spurned the offer
of a court-appointed attorney and undertook to de
fend himself. After hearing the evidence and the
witnesses against him, however, a jury of 11 women
and one man found Chessman guilty of robbery and
kidnaping and invoked California's seldom -used
"Little Lindbergh" kidnaping law to fix the penalty
of death in San Quentin's gas chamber.
On July 3, 1948, Caryl Chessman was taken to San
Quentin and placed in Cell 2455 on death row. No '
one had evinced the slightest interest or sympathy
in his case. His execution appeared inevitable and
imminent The case, which had rated only a few
paragraphs in the newspapers, appeared closed.'
But one of Chessman's favorite sayings is, "When
it gets too tough for everyone else, it's just right
for me." Filing a steady stream of legal appeals,
writs, briefs, and petitions, he dodged and twisted
his way through the courts. Each time the net
seemed drawn tightly about him, he found a legal
loophole in it to delay his execution.
At first Chessman framed his writs and petitions
in longhand on yellow pads. Later, permitted a type
writer, he turned an empty cell on death row into
a law office. Working with tremendous energy and
. a single-minded concentration, he spent 18 hours
a day fighting his case.
Instead of being put. to death that summer of
1948, Chessman has remained alive m Cell 2455
while the U.S. fought the Korean War, went to the
polls three times to elect a President, and advanced
into the Space Age. He has seen nearly 100 other
condemned men and one woman marched or car
ried to the green gas chamber on the floor below,
watched others disintegrate into babbling insanity
by the nightmarish despair of death row.
The judge who sentenced him to death is dead.
Witnesses who testified against him have scattered.
One is confined to a mental institution. The law
under which he was sentenced to death has been
changed to eliminate the death penalty. All pris
oners affected by it have been awarded clemency
save Chessman who, still alive 12 years later, has
become the world's most famous doomed convict
When not busy with his fiery legal petitions,
Chessman began to write. Soon he was vividly
chronicling the horrors of death row and arguing
as brilliantly against the shortcomings of the prison
system and capital punishment as any expert penol
ogist His autobiography, "Cell 2455, Death Row,"
became a best seller and has been published in 14
languages. Despite a decree by the California prison
director that he could write no more, he has gone
to extreme lengths to complete two more books,
one written completely on carbon paper, and smug
gle them out of San Quentin.
Over the years, Chessman's fantastic struggle
" Family Weekly; January 24. 1960