by Paul R. Spitzzeri
As the Los Angeles Police Department and Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office investigations continued into the August 1924 homicide of Theresa Weinstein Moers (the name was changed to Mors just before her death), the testimony of neighbor Iva Martin that she saw two men, neither looking anything like Norman Selby, known to the sports-minded public as ex-boxing great Kid McCoy and who was her lover and apparently confessed to her slaying, running from the building, became a major issue.
The 17 August edition of the Los Angeles Times reported that Moers’ ex-husband (the divorce finalized not much more than a week prior to her death), Albert, was taken to the basement of a Broadway department store (apparently Martin worked there), for an attempt at identification. It was noted, though, that Martin “failed to make a positive identification of him,” while she stated to detectives that, as paraphrased, “Mors was about the general build of the man that she saw escaping from the rear of the Nottingham apartments,” now the Richmond, “just after Mrs. Mors died,” but she could not go any further than that generality.
District Attorney Asa Keyes and LAPD detective Herman Cline, however, “declared that Mr. Mors had accounted to them for every minute of his time . . . when Mrs. Mors was slain,” though his alibi was in the process of verification. His whereabouts were confirmed up until 11:30 in the evening and it was remarked that, even if he was to have gone after that to the Nottingham, there would not have been enough time for him to commit the murder.
It was added that Albert insisted he be taken to her, but was very anxious about it, as he told Cline “my God, they might hang me if I didn’t go.” There were, however, rumors that the men were sent by Mors, but his attorney denied any such possibility and officials added that the other mystery figure could have been an associate of McCoy and offered that he “might be attempting to protect this man, believing that his statement that the death was due to suicide would convince the authorities.”
While the Broadway meeting was taking place, McCoy was under examination from psychiatrists, as noted here previously, though there was an exchange in which, as a blood test was to be administered, the former prizefighter winced, leading the doctor to ask how he stood it in the ring all those years. McCoy replied, “I didn’t let them hit me,” though he was knocked out on several occasions.
A sidelight in the Times was the report that an unidentified Van Nuys man knew the ex-gladiator in Indianapolis “before he ever thought of taking up boxing” and told the paper that “he was a puny lad and an easy mark for all the town bullies.” But, after a play came through town featuring a villain and safecracker named “Kid McCoy,” the account continued, “Selby took a great interest in these performances . . . [and] he shed the name, Selby, appropriating that of his idol, Kid McCoy, in its stead.” It has long been stated that the term “the real McCoy” came to the boxer when he was at his pugilistic peak.
Speaking of the past, a dispatch from New York City attested to Theresa Mors’ years there and she was said to have been “a woman of rare beauty of the blonde, Norwegian type,” though a few surviving photos show her as dark-haired and she was from a Jewish family from modern Czech Republic and Slovakia. In any case, it was also revealed that Albert, also a Jew, was not wealthy on his own initiative, but it was his father who established a handsome estate through dealing in scrap iron.
While Albert received a sizable inheritance, the account went on, “the asserted extravagances of his wife soon squandered” the bequest and “the son’s need for money to satisfy the whims of his pleasure-loving wife is declared to have estranged him from the family.” Albert’s mother was hesitant to talk to the press, saying she was not on good terms with him and knew little of his recent life, especially in Los Angeles.
Theresa, it was discovered, was a stenographer under the elder Mors and her marriage to Albert purportedly went well only while the money lasted. This included the art and antiques business, in which Albert was established by his mother and, while the funds dwindled in the Big Apple, the reason for the move to the Angel City was “in the hope of winning his wife back by getting her away from old companions.” The change in spelling for “Moers” to “Mors” was entailed in this new start, which involved the antique shop across from Westlake (now MacArthur) Park.
The prior day, Albert filed a petition in Probate Court to be recipient of the residue of her estate, to which he was entitled because, though the divorce was recently finalized, the official change in relationship did not take effect for a year following the decree. The declared value was $25,000, though it was reported that, when the division of their estate took place following the divorce, Theresa was to receive around $150,000. Mors apparently intended to reopen the shop, pending a decision rom the court.
Lastly, the Times noted that federal treasury department officers were still on the hunt for missing jewels of Theresa’s believed to have been purchased in Europe and imported to New York City without paying duties. As mentioned in this post, some $25,000 in diamonds and pearls were seized from an unidentified person, but the missing materials were said to be worth much more. McCoy was said to have known nothing about these valuables.
Times officer Harry Carr, in his long-running and popular column, “The Lancer,” offered his two cents about McCoy, writing, in the journalist’s inimitable style,
Mister Kid McCoy has come to the end of his rope. And he will be very lucky if he escapes an intimate association with the end of a rope that belongs to the State of California.
His drunken jamboree with a revolver—although he will have to pay the penalty for it—is about the least objectionable act of his career. It was once in his life, at least, when he did something in his own character.
Echoing Don Ryan of the rival Record, Carr expressed distaste for McCoy’s efforts to mingle in the upper echelons of society, which “fairly turned the stomach.” Blame, however, was assigned to other quarters, specifically “the morons who looked upon him with awe,” while Carr concluded that the most shameful were “motion picture celebrities and the society persons who made a playmate of him and fell for his patter” calculated to make McCoy look more reputable than he actually was.
In a succeeding potion of the column, titled “Pugs in ‘Plugs,'” Carr pulled no punches in flatly asserting that,
Kid McCoy started his career as a brakebeam hobo [who caught rides on the undersides of rail cars]; flowered as a “dirty fighter” and has ended as a cheap hanger-on in Hollywood.
His unblushing confession of his rotten ring career is an amazing chapter in the underworld of sport.
He was not only a shady fighter; but he was cruel and ruthless.
The columnist disdained fighters like him and Jim Corbett with their high-society affectations “between pummeling persons with their fists” and he wondered if a current boxing legend, Jack Dempsey was “perilously on the edge” of being in the same class, though Dempsey, who had a brief film career and a variety of business ventures, including an association with a casino in Ensenada, Baja California, México in which Walter P. Temple, owner of the Homestead, was an investor, got nowhere close to where McCoy fell.
In its number of the 18th, the Times reported that further psychological tests and that each of the three doctors examining McCoy were to issue reports to Keyes. While nothing would be forthcoming until at least then, it was reiterated that an insanity defense appeared likely, while there were obvious concerns that the prisoner’s “prodigious consumption of bootleg liquor had at least undermined and toppled over his intellect.” Three days intervened between his arrest in that bad state and the visits of the psychiatrists showed, it was reported, that McCoy appeared far from insane.
While their subject was candid, the alienists also quickly discerned his “inordinate vanity,” reflected in such examples as his “great pride in his physique” and boasting of associations with nobility and others in Europe. It was telling that one doctor stated, as paraphrased, that the prisoner “would consider insanity a profound disgrace to ‘the real McCoy” even in the event of saving the Kid’s neck from intimate acquaintance with a length of hempen rope.” This last phrase makes a reader wonder if it was Carr who wrote this unattributed article.
That period of rest, abstention from alcohol and decent food meant that “Norman Selby became Kid McCoy again” as he “recovered some of his old-time jauntiness,” informing jailers that he “felt like a million dollars.” After showering, he went through a long-time exercise routine and declared “I’m in perfect physical condition,” even inviting guards to inspect his muscles.
Meanwhile, the Times reported on a new confession allegedly made by McCoy, this time to an unnamed man, yet to be located, who went on “a wild automobile ride” with McCoy between 12:05 and 1 a.m. after Theresa’s death. The acquaintance was walking along Vermont Avenue, not far from the Nottingham, and waiting for a taxi to take him to Hollywood, and, the article continued.
Then began a wild speedy trip to Hollywood, during which according to the witness sought, McCoy recounted how he had slain Mrs. Mors and how he was going over to the Mors residence to kill Albert E. [A.] Mors, her husband. He also is quoted as saying that he was going to kill several other people.
After dropping off the acquaintance, McCoy drove to the Mors house, but found that Albert was not there and this friend evidently thought the confession was a drunken ramble, not to be taken seriously, though it was related to a woman who contacted the police about it.
The paper reviewed Albert’s whereabouts before and after the time of his ex-wife’s killing and it was clear that further checking into his statements was conducted, as were further interviews with him. This led Keyes to reassert that “Mors has made a complete statement to me and I believe he is telling the truth.” With an established alibi and consistent cooperation, the D.A. went on, “I see no reason for disturbing a man under such an emotional strain.”
The Los Angeles Record discussed Theresa’s estate, which her attorney said was worth $100,000 in addition to an $80,000 life insurance policy. It also related that the mystery man who went on the early morning auto ramble to Hollywood was an actor, but nothing else could be learned. Albert provided more detail about his wife’s activities, some of which were “of an unprintable nature,” and involved bootlegging and a prominent Hollywood film performer.
More relevant to the case, however, was Albert’s insistence to Theresa that McCoy would fleece her of money by claiming, via a fake telegram from New York City, to have a sure thing as an investment only requiring funds provided by her. He implored her to set up some agreement, such as what we call today a prenuptial, so that she could protect her assets and, evidently, Theresa agreed to this.
Not surprisingly, the LAPD was inundated with a “mass of hysterical and misleading information which has been volunteered by hundreds of amateur detectives.” As for Iva Martin’s testimony about a heavy-set man stumbling along the west side of the Nottingham next to her unit, detectives opined that this “was nothing more than the usual staggering figure frequently seen in apartment driveways in the tiny hours of the morning.”
In the editorial section, “A Record Reporter” wrote “The Rises and Falls of ‘Kid’ Norman Selby,” who, it was claimed, “has had one of the strangest and most adventurous careers of modern times.” The unnamed scribe concurred with colleague Don Ryan that McCoy was “a present-day Casanova—a picturesque, debonair, unscrupulous adventurer” who was “a cruel, crafty boxer in the ring, but also a fighter of great courage” as well as “a man of striking and unusual contradictions.”
The journalist was a cub reporter in Cleveland nearly three decades prior when he saw McCoy talking to a sports editor in the press room, followed by a police officer who asked some questions and then left without making an arrest. It was learned that a hobo who traveled to town with McCoy claimed the latter stole a coat from the former, but the editor said “I fixed it up because I want him to get a fight here.”
It was added that McCoy was much the opposite of the usual run of pugilists, a dapper dresser, moderate in drink, affecting a gentlemanly persona, though the editor took the nascent boxer to rough places just to watch toughs provoke the thin, unassuming looking figure and then get pummeled. McCoy lost that first match, but won the next in a knockout “and his reputation was made.”
Several years later, the Record reporter saw McCoy, newly returned from Europe and at his boxing best, having developed the “corkscrew” punch that was famous, while also refining a new way to fight in the ring, including fancy footwork, quick thinking, and an intellectual approach on winning a battle. After a decade, though, the retired gladiator was spotted through the window of a Chicago department store as McCoy modeled suspenders.
Another ten years passed and it was learned that McCoy filched five thousand dollars from a millionaire friend by asking for a grubstake in a boxing academy that never materialized. After that, the ex-champ decamped for Los Angeles and the reporter saw McCoy in the Record office in 1922 in the company of Hubert Kittle, mentioned in this post as having owned the gun used to shoot Mors prior to his recent suicide.
It was noted that the two engaged in liquor theft and gunplay that was not McCoy’s previous way of operating, while Kittle’s drug habit was such that it was surmised “that Kid McCoy acquired the habit and that this is responsible for his being charged with the murder of the woman he claims he loved.”
Yet, the piece concluded, there was enough charm in McCoy, “even though he has gone down far on the social scale,” that he maintained admirers, including those who still remembered his glory days in the ring. The summarizing statement:
The public has always been interested in him. In his adventuring, in his fighting and love-making, he had appealed to the uncivilized streak that exists in all human beings. The liked to read about him and now, in the biggest story he ever has furnished them, he moves them to pity because it is probably the last appearance of one of their favorite entertainers.
Ryan, again, offered another of his essays, under the heading “From Padded First To Padded Cell,” which began with the assertion that McCoy’s defense “is ready made for him” because he “is punch crazy.” The columnist continued that “it is very likely that by adroit employment of such a defense the notorious champion of prize ring and boudoir could escape the hangman’s noose and land in an insane asylum.” Ryan suggested that “From padded fist to padded cell might then be written as the title for McCoy’s career.”
The writer reminded readers of such terms as punch drunk, punch dizzy, punch goofy, and punch crazy, all reflective of “a condition resulting from injury to one of the important nerve centers of the body.” Expressed another way, this described “the literal condition of the fighter who has been hit in the head so hard that the spinal system is disarranged. Several examples were given by Ryan of fighters who were mental wrecks and shells of their former glorious specimens in the ring and he cited two fights in which McCoy was notably injured.
This led to the concluding statement that,
Should attorneys for McCoy take this tack in the defense there is no doubt that dozens of intimates would come forward to testify that the Kid’s actions in recent years have been those of a man mentally unbalanced. With Jack Dempsey on the stand, with [opera diva] Mary Garden, with —
Well, it would be an interesting trial, anyway. The alienists and the psychoanalysts could hold high carnival. The Biltmore hotel register [of witnesses in town to testify] would resemble a page from “Who’s Who” and Los Angeles would have her place in the sun again.
Check back tomorrow for part seven as we continue our look into the aftermath of Theresa Weinstein Moers’ killing.