The Mysterious Murder of Jean Ellroy - Unsolved Mysteries

Jean Ellroy

Crime novelist James Ellroy investigates his mother’s brutal murder.

Jean Ellroy

The suspected killer

CASE DETAILS

Jean was a single mother of a 10-year-old son

Novelist James Ellroy’s dark tales of sexual obsession and violence often top the best-seller list.  But few of Ellroy’s readers know how much truth there is just below the surface of his stories.  When James was 10-years-old, his mother was beaten, raped, and strangled:

“My mother’s crime scene to me is all crime scenes. The crime scene to me is—it’s primal.  It’s almost oedipal.  The moment of the discovery of her body is in many ways the moment of my birth, because it’s the genesis of my detectives’ obsessions with the murders that they ultimately become consumed by.”

At the time of her murder, Ellroy’s mother, Jean, was a divorcee in her early 40s.  She was a staff nurse at a Los Angeles factory and lived close by in the town of El Monte.  During the week, Jean had custody of 10-year-old James.  Every Saturday James would take the bus to stay with his father.  Sundays he would return by cab.  The custody ritual ran like clockwork until the afternoon of June 22, 1958.  Ellroy remembers the events of that day vividly:

“The yard was full of policemen in uniforms and plainclothesmen.  I wasn’t afraid, but I was anxious. I was apprehensive.  People were surprised that I wasn’t more overtly emotional right after I got the news that my mother had been murdered.  I think they expected me to cry or carry on or display some kind of overt histrionics, but I took the news internally.”

After his mother’s murder, the young James became obsessed with crime novels.  The books provided him with a temporary solace and he often read through several at a time.  But the comfort was short lived.  At the age of 17, Ellroy suffered yet another devastating tragedy—the death of his father:

“I went from bad to worse.  I was no choirboy before that time, but, boy, oh, boy, things got worse.  I drank, used drugs, broke into houses and stole things, drove around in stolen cars, shoplifted, and did spurts of county jail time from 1965 to 1977.  My life was going nowhere and I wanted a real life.  I hadn’t been with a woman in years and I wanted to write.  I wanted to write dark, evil, well-defined, perverted, powerful, compelling crime fiction.  I knew I wouldn’t be able to as long as I drank and used drugs.”

Jean and the suspect left the drive in by 3:00 AM

Ellroy sobered up and the words tumbled out.  His first novel was published in 1982.  More than a dozen followed.  Seeping between the lines was a dark legacy of his  mother’s rape and murder.  It bubbled to the surface in “The Black Dahlia,” his take on the 1947 slaying of Elizabeth Short, one of the most infamous unsolved murders of the 20th century.  Ellroy dedicated the book to his mother:

“It’s as if Elizabeth Short became a stand-in for my mother.  I wanted to feel the horror of my mother’s death and I used Elizabeth Short as a substitute.”

By 1994, James Ellroy was ready for the real thing.  Detective William Stoner of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department arranged for Ellroy to examine the official case file on his mother’s murder:

“This was the first time I’d ever been asked by a member of the family of the victim to actually see the crime scene photographs.  I was very hesitant to show those to him because they’re very graphic.  And so I warned him.”

James sees the evidence 30 years after the murder

Physical evidence from the murder scene had been stored in a paper bag, locked away for more than 30 years.  James held the nylon stocking used to strangle his mother and touched her silk dress:

“I started sweating, I started shaking.  It was locked down, revved in, right on the edge of shell shock. Truly an awe-inspiring moment.”

And then, a face stared back at him from the file—his mother’s suspected killer.  Because he had dark hair and an olive complexion, he had become known as “the swarthy man.”  Several eyewitnesses saw him with Jean Ellroy just hours before she was slain.  Around 10 PM, Jean and the swarthy man pulled into a local drive-in.  With Detective Stoner’s help, Ellroy tracked down Lavonne Chambers, the waitress who served the couple that June evening in 1958:

“She had this beautiful dress, pearls around her neck.  Her hair was done beautifully.  That’s what made me remember her so well because she was beautiful, and she had this dress on… She looked very prim and proper.  She was very pleasant.  He had no accent.  He didn’t talk with any, even a southern drawl.  He just talked very normally like you’d expect an average Californian to talk.”

James sees the evidence 30 years after the murder

Jean and the swarthy man were next seen at a bar called the Desert Inn.  They were with a blonde woman.  No one knows her name or how she fit into the evening’s plans.  She apparently knew both Jean Ellroy and the suspect and left the bar with them at around midnight.  At 2:15 AM, Jean and the suspect returned to the drive-in.  According to Lavonne Chambers, the blonde woman was no longer with them:

“This time she was not as neat and prim as she was when I waited on her the first time.  She looked like she had been necking or fooling around.  Her dress and her hair were kind of messed up. But they didn’t seem overly friendly together.  And he wasn’t saying anything.  He was just too quiet.”

Shortly before 3:00 AM, Jean and the suspect left the drive-in.  According to Detective Stoner, time eventually ran out for Jean Ellroy:

“I think the swarthy man decided that the evening wasn’t over for him.  He either knew about a secluded location or came upon it and stopped and forced himself on Mrs. Ellroy.”

For James Ellroy, the unidentified blonde woman may be the only person that knows who killed his mother:

“The blonde woman knows the identity of the swarthy man.  The blonde has told people.  There are people out there who know elements of this case, who know names, who’ve heard the story, and it’s just a question of tapping into those people.”

Though not a suspect, authorities consider the unidentified blonde woman an important material witness in this case.

Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season eight with Robert Stack and in season seven with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

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7 Comments

  1. William

    None of the Ellroy clips are included in the referenced Amazon videos.

    Reply

  2. Jason Carter

    This particular episode of Unsolved Mysteries changed my entire life. It introduced me to someone who would go on to become not just my favorite writer, but eventually, my greatest teacher… James Ellroy. I just published a piece about this episode–and specifically Robert Stack– on the Ellroy-dominant UK Blog “Venetian Vase”.
    Take a look: https://venetianvase.co.uk/2017/05/07/the-man-who-introduced-me-to-james-ellroy/

    Reply

  3. Steve

    The guy over her shoulder in the top left of the photo fits the Identikit image of the killer almost perfectly, and I’ve painted portraits for a living.
    Who is he?

    Reply

  4. Mitchell

    I think the important lesson here is for one to ask oneself, “Would my present company have the decency to cooperate with an investigation if I were murdered” or “Would my friends care if I were murdered”?

    If no, find yourself some new company because your present company is comprised of ladies of ill repute and/or low men in yellow coats. You also need to take a look in the mirror and reassess as you have probably made some poor life choices.

    Reply

  5. Barbara

    They are probably all dead by now. The murder happened more than 50 years ago.

    Reply

  6. Anonymous

    Why can’t people come forward…stop being silent because of their silence this man has gotten away with murder. Poor lady. She probably just wanted a good evening out and to be treated nicely. So horrible it ended in tradgey. I hope she is at peace now. I hope that sick person who did this is rotting in hell. Good luck to her son may he find the answers and get the closeur he needs.

    Reply

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7.1 This Website may use a standard technology called a “cookie” to collect information about how you use the Website. Cookies reside on your computer and help our Website to recognize your computer’s browser as a previous visitor. This information allows us to customize delivery of information. For example, our Website may use cookies to save and remember registration information or preferences that you may have set while browsing the Website, to keep track of your shopping cart, to ensure you don’t see the same ad content repeatedly, to deliver content specific to your interests, and to save your password so you do not have to re-enter it each time you visit our site. We use cookies only to gather information as indicated in this policy.

7.2 In addition, on occasion our site may also set a “session cookie” which helps us administer the Website. The session cookie expires when you close your browser and does not retain any information about you after it expires.

7.3 Finally, we may also use an ad network provider to help present advertisements on this and other Cosgrove Meurer Productions, Inc. websites. This ad network provider, like other advertising service vendors, uses cookies, web beacons, or similar technologies on the hard drive of your computer to serve you advertisements tailored to interests you have shown by browsing on this and other sites you have visited, and to determine whether you have seen a particular advertisement before and to avoid sending you duplicate advertisements. In doing so, the provider collects non-personal data such as your browser type, your operating system, web pages visited, time of visits, content viewed, ads viewed, and other clickstream data. The use of cookies, web beacons, or similar technologies by these ad network providers is subject to their own privacy policies, not ours, and Cosgrove Meurer Productions, Inc. assumes no responsibility for the collection or use of such information.

ARTICLE 8. Banner Advertising
8.1 We have contracted with an ad-service to place banner advertising on our Website. All of the data provided and generated by the ad-server software remains in our possession. This feature of our Website may, on occasion, set “cookies” on your computer. Any information collected or stored by the ad-service or the cookies is treated in the same manner as other information described in this statement.

ARTICLE 9. Children’s Personal Information
9.1 Consistent with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act:

9.1.1 This site does NOT collect, use, or disclose personal information (including online contact information) of children under the age of thirteen (13).

9.1.2 In the event that a child under the age of 13 attempts to register on our site, we will NOT accept the registration and will delete information received from the child.

9.1.3 In the event that a child posts personal information in a public forum such as a chat room, we will attempt to delete that information once we become aware of it.

ARTICLE 10. Security of Your Personal Information
10.1 Cosgrove Meurer Productions, Inc. employs reasonable security measures consistent with standard industry practice, for information collected through this Website. We believe that we have adequate security measures in place in our physical facilities to protect against the loss, misuse, or alteration of the information we collect on our Website. We also use internal protections to limit access to users’ personal information to only those employees who need the information to perform a specific job.

ARTICLE 11. Sale or Merger
11.1 If this Website is sold to, or merges with, another company not owned by Cosgrove Meurer Productions, Inc., you should expect that some or all of the information collected from this Website may be transferred to the buyer/surviving company. If so, CMP will seek to obligate the acquiring company to use any personal information transferred by this Website in a manner consistent with this statement, but cannot guarantee that it will be able to impose that requirement or that the acquiring company will comply.

ARTICLE 12. Legal Process
12.1 You should be aware that Cosgrove Meurer Productions, Inc. may be required to disclose your personal information to the government or third parties under certain circumstances, such as in court or regulatory proceedings.

ARTICLE 13.  Contacting the Website

13.1        If you have any questions about this Privacy Statement, the practices of this Website, or your dealings with this Website, please contact us at: unsolved@unsolved.com.

ARTICLE 14.  general information

14.1        Choice of Law:  This Agreement and the Additional Terms shall be governed by, construed and enforced in accordance with the laws of the State of California , as it is applied to agreements entered into and to be performed entirely within such state, without regard to conflict of law principles.

14.2        Choice of Forum:  You agree that any cause of action you or Cosgrove Meurer Productions, Inc. brings to enforce this Agreement and/or the Additional Terms, or in connection with any matters related to this Website and/or the Privacy Statement, shall be submitted to arbitration in the County of Los Angeles, State of California, United States of America in accordance with the commercial rules and regulations of the American Arbitration Association then in effect (as amended herein), provided that said arbitration shall be heard before a single arbitrator, who shall be a retired judge, selected pursuant to such rules and regulations, and shall be conducted on an expedited basis and in confidence. The arbitrator’s decision shall be controlled by the terms and conditions of this agreement and any other agreements I may enter into with you, and shall be final and binding, and shall provide for each party to bear its own costs of arbitration and attorneys’ fees.  Each party expressly waives any right to a jury.  Judgment upon the award of the arbitrator may be entered or enforced in any court of competent jurisdiction. 

14.4        If any provision of this Agreement, or the application thereof to any person or circumstances, is held invalid or for any reason unenforceable then such provision shall be deemed superseded by a valid, enforceable provision that matches, as closely as possible, the original provision, and the other provisions of this Agreement shall remain in full force and effect.  The failure of either party to insist upon strict performance of any provision of this Agreement shall not be construed as a waiver of any provision or right.  Unless expressly provided otherwise, this Agreement is the entire agreement between you and Cosgrove Meurer Productions, Inc. with respect to the use of this Website and shall not be modified except in writing, signed by an authorized representative of Cosgrove Meurer Productions, Inc.

ARTICLE 15.  European Union and Other Foreign Nations

15.1        This Website is governed by and operated in accordance with the laws of United States of America and is intended for enjoyment of residents of the United States.  Cosgrove Meurer Productions, Inc. makes no representation that this Website is governed by or operated in accordance with the laws of other nations.  By using this Website and submitting any personal information, visitors from outside of the United States acknowledge this Website is subject to U.S. law, consent to the transfer of personal data to the U.S., and waive any claims that may arise under their own national laws.