Anya Sosoyeva

TheMasterKey · 10-09-2009, 11:00 AM

LOS ANGELES. Calif. Feb. 25, 1939

On the slimmest of clues — a comb, a card, a glove and a crude club, all blood-stained —police attempted today to find the murderer of a 32-year-old Russian dancer, actress and theatrical student.

The victim of the clubbing and attack last night on the campus of Los Angeles City College was stately, attractive, blonde Anya Sosoyeva. Miss Sosoyeva, a featured dancer with the Ziegfeld "Follies" one season, came here three months ago from her home in San Francisco, ambitious to enter either the movies or radio.

She was on her way from her apartment, across the street from the college, to the auditorium to appear in a revue in which she and other aspirants were hoping to attract the attention of talent scouts.

Her partner in the act was Wally Myas. When he did not find Anya backstage at 9 o’clock, Myas decided t look for her.

"I went out in front of the auditorium and stood there for awhile," Myas told police. "Then I started to walk toward the street, about 9:20.

"Suddenly I saw someone staggering toward me. I recognized the figure as Anya. As she came closer, I saw her face was bloody. She was sick. I grabbed her as she was about to fall.

‘Nobody came to protect me—why didn't you come sooner,' she asked me. I asked her what happened and she said a man hit her over the head. She said someone asked her where she was going and as she turned, something struck her.”

Miss Sosoyeva died early this morning of skull fractures, without regaining consciousness. Physicians said she had been criminally attacked.

Capt. Dalton R. Patton of the homicide bureau found a bloodstained gray glove, a celluloid comb with blood on it, a bloody card on which something was written, and a heavy piece of wood—a two by four, about three feet long —under a tree a few yards from the spot where Myas first saw Anya staggering. Patton indicated the most important clue was the card, but he refused to divulge what was writtenon it.

TheMasterKey · 10-09-2009, 11:18 AM

As with the other posts, I'll try to see if I can find out if the killer was brought to justice.

I did see a nice photo of Anya. She was quite pretty and was wearing a cloche hat--so it must have been taken in the early '30s.

Kugmu · 10-09-2009, 11:20 AM

A little info about the killer is found here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Campbell
Margaret Campbell's son...

Guest · 10-09-2009, 11:22 AM

Sad!

TheMasterKey · 10-09-2009, 11:35 AM

SEATTLE, March 6, 1939 (UP)—Seattle police Monday searched for a negro, self-styled "the black magnet," for questioning in connection with the death of Anya Sosyeva, Los Angeles dancer killed on the Los Angeles City college campus February 24.

Police said the negro they were seeking boasted he has a mystic quality for "drawing women to him under a spell."

Police said the man allegedly beat and attacked a Seattle woman nearly two years ago. Charges were filed against him, but the woman would not prosecute and the man went to Los Angeles, police records showed.

It was believed the man have been attracted by Miss Sosoyeva’s beauty. He has a long police record of similar attacks on women in the East, police said.

TheMasterKey · 10-09-2009, 11:36 AM

Thanks for the info, Kugmu. I'm still searching...

Northern Lights · 10-09-2009, 11:41 AM

There's a thread about Margaret Campbell, Anya is mentioned there somewhere too.
http://www.findadeath.com/forum/showthread.php?t=22550

TheMasterKey · 10-09-2009, 11:48 AM

One Man Friend Furnishes Alibi; Another Makes Statement To The Police To Clear Self Of Suspicion

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 27 — Clues from the love life of Anya Sosoyeva, blonde Russian dancer, failed police today in a baffling hunt for the man who beat her to death three nights ago on the campus of Los Angeles City College.

A 34-year-old accountant, Kermit Anderson, who told of "keeping company" with the former Ziegfeld dancer for several months, furnished proof to police that he had joined friends in a poker game at the time she was bludgeoned.

Captain D. R. Fatten quoted Anderson as saying ho had once lived atthe same hotel as Miss Sosoyeva and during their brief but tempestuous romance she had scratched him twice in quarrels, and he had slapped her once.

At San Francisco, the movie-struck victim's former home, 30-year-old Stewart Johnson went to police headquarters last night, saying he wanted to make a statement for the record to clear himself of any suspicion.

Officer John Hunt said Johnson told of his onetime friendship with Anya, but declared he knew of no reason why anyone should want to take her life.

Police here still held for further questioning Bernard Sutton, 33, janitor, who was found in Barnsdall Park a few blocks from the college campus Friday night. Sutton is on probation on a lewd charge.

Two murder theories were advanced by Captain Patton, directing the investigation. He said the evidence indicated "it was a grudge slaying, or the work of a sex fiend who lay in wait for a victim."

The pretty dancer was struck on her head with "a two-by-four piece of timber as she hurried to the college auditorium to appear in a parody playlet of "Idiot's Delight. A fellow student in the federal-sponsored night school, Kenneth Kremith, told police Miss Sosoyena before lapsing into unconscious ness, cried out she had been hit without warning by a man she had never seen before.

County autopsy surgeons said an examination indicated she had not been ravished.

Miss Beulah Ann Stanley, night school dramatic coach, who had befriended her and shared an apartment with her, said the dancer had been so despondent over a blighted love affair recently "that I had decided to sell my small coupe and give her enough money to go back to San Francisco."

An osteopathic physician reported to police the flaxen-haired Russian visited him about two weeks ago for a physical examination complaining she was indifferent to the attentions of men.

Northern Lights · 10-09-2009, 12:37 PM

DEWITT CLINTON COOK

On the evening of February 24, 1939, DeWitt Clinton Cook, 20, a former printer for a Hollywood trade paper, clubbed to death Russian dancer Anya Sosoyeva, 32, on the campus of Los Angeles City College. Cook later said in his confession to police, â??She screeched a little, so I hit her some more. Then she only moaned.â? She was found by police around 9:15 p.m. Sosoyeva had been sexually assaulted and lived just long enough to give police a partial description of her assailant. Clues found at the scene, reported the Times, â??consisted mainly of an old pair of shoes retrieved near the scene by a dog, a pair of gloves, a size 38 blue serge coat and a 30-inch piece of scantling believed used to bludgeon the unsuspecting girl as she walked across the campus to attend an evening dramatics class.â?

Cook clubbed film studio dancer Delia Bogard, 17, on March 28 as she was returning home from an evening at the movies near her Hollywood home, but he was frightened away by her screams before he could further his attack. A piece of wood similar to the Sosoyeva murder â??scantlingâ? was found nearby. Bogard, suffering from a severe head injury, was hospitalized for weeks and later moved in with her parents.

On Thursday night, August 24, 1939, Cook clubbed and raped Myrtle Wagner, 17, a domestic working for Mr. and Mrs. M. W. Lippman, at their residence in Hollywood as she was crocheting a towel in the kitchen. Wagnerâ??s head injuries were so severe she had to use a cane for weeks after the assault. Police patrols were increased in the Hollywood area by LAPD Homicide Captain Dalton R. Patton and Deputy Chief Homer B. Cross.

Four nights later Mr. and Mrs. W. F. Warnock were relaxing at their home on Oakwood Avenue in Hollywood. According to Mrs. Warnock, â??We were going out to play badminton. My husband was in the front room with our little daughter and our dog. When I finished dressing in the bedroom I went to the front room to leave but at the last moment decided to return for a hat. Then I saw a man in a brown suit in front of the dresser. I screamed. He jumped out of the window which had been opened. My husband came running but the burglar was gone.â? Cook was arrested by LAPD Sergeants E. L. Berger and A. D. McCoole a short distance from the Warnock home. An eighteen-inch piece of two-by-four, a long screwdriver, a pocket knife and several pairs of gloves were found on Cook. He was also wearing tennis shoes that matched a footprint left at the scene of the Wagner assault. According to the Times, police also found at his home a pair of moccasin shoes â??whose soles matched perfectly the unusual pattern found beside Miss Bogardâ??s unconscious form.â?

Cook confessed on August 29 to the Sosoyeva murder and the Bogard/Wagner assaults in the presence of LAPD homicide officers and a representative from the district attorneyâ??s office. After his confession he had lunch with the officers at a Sunset Boulevard coffee shop, where he ate a plate of spaghetti, ravioli, spinach and mashed potatoes. During lunch, Cook estimated that he had committed approximately three hundred burglaries in two years. After finishing lunch the group proceeded to the three crime scenes and Cook re-enacted the clubbings for police and reporters. Cook was then given a physical and psychiatric exam before spending the night at Central Jail in downtown Los Angeles.

According to Edward D. Radin in his book 12 Against Crime, de River was involved in Cookâ??s confession of the Sosoyeva murder on August 29:

"After examining the suspect, Dr. de River, who has a flair for well-rounded phrases, told the officers, 'This fellowâ??s mind is like a house with the shutters drawn, concealing in its shadows the mystery of what goes on behind the curtain. Wiry, catlike, he is of sadistic tendencies, but legally sane and knows right from wrong. He is the lone-wolf type â?? a nocturnal prowler who likes to wander in lonely out-of-the-way places at night.'

"The psychiatrist added that he was certain that the prisoner was the moonlight attacker. Guided by this opinion, police resumed their questioning of the youth and he finally admitted the murder of the pretty dancer and the attacks on the others."

The next day he entered a plea of guilty to four of the nine felony charges against him. Cook refused, however, to repeat his confession in court on September 1, and his pleas were set aside for trial by Superior Judge Clarence L. Kincaid.

Born in Waterloo, Iowa, Cook did not finish high school; instead, he served eleven months in the Iowa State School for Boys for petty crime and was paroled. He moved to Los Angeles with his parents at the age of sixteen; shortly afterward his father was killed in a car accident. On June 19, 1938, he married Lorraine Levy (his first cousin) in Tijuana, Mexico, and they had another ceremony at a downtown Los Angeles wedding chapel in October. His salary as a printer at the trade paper was twenty-four dollars a week, and he resided with his wife and his mother, Mrs. Ruby Cook, 45, at 1300 1/2 North Sycamore Avenue in Los Angeles.

Cookâ??s trial opened on October 4, 1939, before Superior Judge Thomas L. Ambrose. Cook was prosecuted by Deputy District Attorney Ugene U. Blalock, and he was defended by Deputy Public Defenders Ellery Cuff and William B. Neely. A jury of twelve men was selected. On October 11 the jury and courtroom watched Cook re-enact on film the murder of Anya Sosoyeva. As reported by the Times, â??He [Cook] intently watched the screen, working his jaws vigorously on some chewing gum, as he saw himself demonstrating to officers how he assertedly struck Miss Sosoyeva on the head...â?

On October 13 the jury took only forty minutes to find Cook guilty. According to the Times,

"The case is considered one of the strangest in criminal law because there was no defense offered and Cook never once denied the murder, nor did he himself enter a plea of not guilty....

"The value of sound motion pictures of a defendant re-enacting a murder, which were shown during this trial for the first time in the history of California jurisprudence, was pointed out by members of the jury after they brought in the verdict. Judge Ambrose declared he questioned the jurors in his chambers to determine how valuable they thought the pictures were from the standpoint of evidence. Members of the jury felt that by seeing the re-enactment of the crime in sound pictures in which Cook answered questions to police about the murder, they were assisted materially in clearing up several points they had under discussion, Judge Ambrose said."

Cook was sentenced on October 18 to the gas chamber at San Quentin. As he was being led away from the courtroom, Cook â??wisecrackedâ? to news photographers: â??Oh, let â??em take a picture. Itâ??s the last one theyâ??ll ever get of me.â? On the same day two resolutions were unanimously adopted by the Police Commission commending LAPD Chief of Police Arthur C. Hohmann and the officers who had brought Cook â??to justice.â? The officers named in the commendation were â??Sergts. D. A. McCoole and Edwin L. Berger, Deputy Chief Homer B. Cross, Capt. C. B. Horrall, Acting Captain Dalton Patton and Ray Pinker, laboratory expert.â?

On October 26, 1939, Cook was transported by train to San Quentin Prison. His appeal was turned down, and his wife obtained an annulment on May 24, 1940. Cook pleaded for his life in a letter to California Governor Olson on July 22:

"If I were older by twenty years, I would perhaps not wish for a commutation. But I am a young man still. To me, life is life, whether in a penitentiary or elsewhere. I stand convicted of murder, but I am not a murderer in my heart. Surely this is the contingency for which the alternative penalty was prepared. There is no doubt in my mind that when my term expired, I would emerge a better man in all ways, spiritually, mentally and physically."

Cook received a temporary reprieve from Governor Olson on November 25, 1940, and filed for clemency on December 30. He was denied clemency on January 5, 1941.

On January 31, 1941, DeWitt Clinton Cook was executed at 10:02 a.m. in the San Quentin gas chamber. According to the Times, â??All night long in his death cell he had played a small radio, making no attempt to sleep. He ate no breakfast. He told a guard last night â??I have made up my mind I have to go; that is all there is to it.â?? â?

http://www.goodreads.com/story/show/...exual_Criminal