People v. Reid
People v. Reid
Opinion of the Court
Appellant, in a jury-waived trial, was found guilty of the murder of William Kenneth Strang. She contends on this appeal that the element of malice was lacking in her perpetration of the crime; that therefore her conviction of second decree murder should not stand and urges this court to modify the judgment by reducing the offense to manslaughter “in the light of all the evidence in this case.” We have read the transcript and see no reason to disturb the finding of the trial court. Nor is it necessary or desirable in settling the point raised by appellant to recount in detail the unsavory testimony of all the circumstances leading to and culminating in the tragedy which sent a human soul all unprepared into eternity. It will be sufficient to refer to a few of the incidents which stand out in bold relief and, particularly, to the manner in which the deadly attack was made, first by a stab wound in the back, followed by a fatal stab wound in the chest as deceased turned and twisted in an effort to escape.
This appellant, while married to Harold Reid and making her home with him, received the attentions and frequent amorous embraces of the deceased for a period of several months prior to May, 1945. They both lived in Torrance and on Thursday, May 3, 1945, appellant, at the request of the deceased, left her own home and went to his. She had done this occasionally during their acquaintance. She stayed until the following Sunday. On that afternoon she and deceased went for an automobile ride in the Palos Verdes hills returning to Strang’s home toward evening where appellant undertook to prepare a rabbit dinner. When the meal was almost ready Strang’s divorced wife and a Mrs. Vaught drove up to the house to make some inquiry about turkeys, saw and talked with Strang and were about to drive away when Strang urged them to come in and stay for dinner. Appellant was introduced by deceased to his former wife and Mrs. Vaught and she joined in extending the invitation to dinner. However,
After dinner adjournment was taken to a nearby bar, known as the Verplais Cafe, the party traveling in Mrs. Vaught’s coupe. Mrs. Vaught drove the car, appellant sat in the middle and Mrs. Strang sat in the lap of her former husband. When they arrived at the bar shortly before midnight, the appellant noticed two men standing at the rear of the establishment. She recognized them but did not know their names and when she went to the rear bought them each a drink, while the deceased and the other two women ordered their drinks near the front of the bar. Shortly thereafter appellant stepped out the rear door into an alley but the deceased went after her and caused her to return. As the party later left the cafe through the front door the appellant informed her companions that the two men for whom she had purchased the drinks had extended an invitation to come to their apartment for a few more drinks, but the invitation was declined by Mr. and Mrs. Strang and Mrs. Vaught. The Verplais Cafe is located across the street from the Torrance Police Station. Mrs. Vaught’s coupe had been parked in a nearby parking lot half a block away and while the four members of the party, that is, the appellant, the deceased and the other two women were on their way to the Vaught automobile, the appellant met the two men for whom drinks had been bought and stopped and talked with them. Finally, the deceased retraced his steps and engaged in the conversation which was very brief and the deceased and the appellant then followed Mrs. Strang and Mrs. Vaught, who had proceeded toward the coupe. When Mrs. Strang and Mrs. Vaught were getting into the coupe the appellant and the deceased were standing on the sidewalk about 20 feet away and, according to Mrs. Strang, they were discussing something. While she could not hear what was being said, from the tone of their voices they seemed to be arguing. A moment later the deceased came to the car and fell on the running board. He had been stabbed in the chest and in the back. As he approached the automobile, he said to his former wife, “Honey, she cut me.” The appellant immediately followed the deceased to the car and hysterically screamed “I cut him; I cut him,” endeavored
Officer Hill testified that the appellant arrived first and handed him the knife with which the stabbing was done. The officer stated that when he first saw appellant she was “running across the street directly toward where I was standing watching where she was running for. . . . She came running up and said, ‘I cut him, I cut him.’ I asked her ‘Cut who?’ and I couldn’t get any sense out of her. All she said was ‘I cut him, I cut him.’ ” The officer stated that he then saw the appellant running back across the street and “as I came around the corner she had Kenneth Strang and was lifting him up. I then said ‘Leave him alone.’ She said, ‘Well, I am going to try to get him to a hospital.’ I looked up and said ‘I don’t think he will go with you. He is dead.’ ”
Immediately thereafter the appellant was interviewed by Captain Ashton of the Torrance Police Department. At the trial he testified at length concerning the interview, stating among other things that “I asked Mrs. Reid why she had cut him and Mrs. Reid stated that her and Mr. Strang had had an agreement among themselves . . . that if Mr. Strang stepped out on Mrs. Reid, Mrs. Reid had the privilege of cutting Mr. Strang, and if Mrs. Reid stepped out on Mr. Strang, he had the privilege of cutting her. . . . She stated that Mr. Strang was a ship’s rigger, working in the shipyards, and that he had usually always carried a heavy ship rigger’s knife with him and that she didn’t have any knife and that the knife in question was taken from a shelf on the back entrance of the house, at her house; that it belonged to her husband, which he had used on a fishing ship when he would go fishing; that she had showed the knife to Mr. Strang. He had seen it on
The Chief of Police of Torrance also testified as to a conversation which he had with Mrs. Reid on the morning following the tragedy, covering many of the points testified to by Captain Ashton. In his testimony he quoted the appellant as saying that she noticed Mrs. Strang and Mrs. Vaught as they drove up to the Strang residence. “She said ‘Oh, my God, here she is,’ so she said ‘I immediately went to the bedroom and closed the door.’ She didn’t want Mrs. Strang to see her there. . . . Kenneth went over and opened the door and Mrs. Strang came in there with her and wanted to know who she was and asked her name, so they talked to her a little bit and she came out in the living room and they had a social time there, playing the radio and dancing a little, and then Mrs. Lola Strang said she had a date, she had to leave. Kenneth asked her where the date was and she said down to Verplais Cafe. So they insisted that they stay for dinner with them. After a little discussion, she said, begging them to stay, why, they said they would, so she went out in the kitchen and started getting the dinner ready. Kenneth came out into
Under cross-examination the chief of police was asked, “When was it she told you that he shoved her on the shoulder?,” and answered, “After they had come out of the cafe and had started up the street there, right shortly after the two men walked away he came back to her and gave her that shove there. That was the second one that evening. The first one was up in the house.”
At the trial, Dr. Webb, chief autopsy surgeon of Los Angeles County, testified that the first of the two wounds suffered by the deceased was “on the upper right side of the back at the level of the upper border of the scapula. This wound had a penetration of 1 inch to 1% inches. The other-wound, designated as Wound B, is found on the left side upper front of the chest at a point 2 inches to the right of the front median line and 7 inches below the shoulder level. This wound was three-fourths of an inch in length and had passed into the thorax, between the third and fourth left ribs, penetrating 3 inches to pass through the left side of the heart, which resulted in a profuse internal hemorrhage. Q. What did you determine to be the cause of death, Doctor ? A. The immediate cause of death was stab wound of the heart.”
At the trial appellant testified that while Mrs. Strang and Mrs. Vaught were gone to the Verplais Cafe, where the former had a date, “I was in the bedroom fixing myself ready to go. I went in the room, starting to get ready, and he said ‘Where do you think you are going?’ I said ‘I am going home.’ He said ‘No, you are not,’ and that is when he hit me in the face and I started crying and I ran out the back door and they have a kind of a tape that hooks the back screen door and I was trying to get that undone when Ken came out and he said ‘If Lola comes back, tell her I will be right back.’ Q. Did he catch you? A. Yes. He said, ‘You are not leaving. Come on back in and have a drink and we will eat and then I will drive you home. ’ Q.. And did he drive you home after that? A. No. Q. What happened? A. Then they came back and then everything was all ready and we dished it up. I said, ‘Ken, I don’t want to dish it up.’ He
Other items of evidence which were before the trial court we have not deemed it advisable or necessary to quote. They related to a condition which appellant charged to the deceased, but we are satisfied that whatever resentment she held toward him on that account would never, in itself, have caused this tragedy, although it may have contributed somewhat to the wounded feelings and highly emotional state of appellant which, in our opinion, did cause it. As Congreve has said,
"Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned,
Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned,”
and the facts of this case seem to prove it. The picture is succinctly presented in respondent’s brief in the following language: "The facts of this case show that the appellant met deceased, fell in love with him, and that they lived with each other much of the time for a period of several months. . . . That they apparently enjoyed each other’s company with the exception of the periods when deceased was drinking. Both drank intoxicating liquors a great deal. Appellant knew deceased was divorced, but had never met his former wife. Deceased knew appellant was married. They agreed during their illicit love affair that should one step out on the other the abused would have the right to cut the other. Deceased carried a rigger’s knife and appellant a fish knife. Appellant was so in love with deceased that she not only risked her reputation, but the wrath of her husband and also according to her, her physical health, to be with him. Up until the day of the homicide there had apparently been no cause for her to be jealous, but on that day the divorced wife of deceased entered the picture and deceased made strong efforts to have her come back to him. Appellant became angry and remonstrated with him, but he continued in his efforts. At that time the natural bent of a woman took place and she became jealous. She refused to eat with them; she left them at the bar when they went out for a drink.
The contention of appellant that the evidence would warrant our reducing the offense from second degree murder to manslaughter calls for consideration of the definitions set out in the Penal Code of murder, malice, the degrees of murder and manslaughter (Pen. Code, §§ 187, 188, 189 and 192). If malice is shown in the commission of a homicide the offense is murder of either the first or second degree. Section 189 of the Penal Code itemizes the various kinds of murder which are of the first degree and closes with the words “all other kinds of murders are of the second degree.” The trial court determined that the killing in this case was not “wilful, deliberate and premeditated” and for that reason decided to characterize the offense as second degree murder. In so doing he necessarily found that malice existed.
We are satisfied that the finding was within the law and as analyzed in People v. Bender (1945), 27 Cal.2d 164, at page 181 [163 P.2d 8], in the following passage: “Murder of the second degree: a willful act characterized by the presence of malice aforethought and, at least ordinarily, by the specific intent to kill, and by the absence of premeditation and deliberation.”
The judgment is affirmed.
Shinn, J.,-and Wood, J., concurred.
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.