by Paul R. Spitzzeri
With the investigation by the Los Angeles Police Department and Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office into the August 1924 shooting death of Theresa Weinstein Moers (Mors) complete and the arraignment of her lover, former boxing title-holder Norman Selby (known in the ring and after his career ended as Kid McCoy), who pled not guilty to the charge of first-degree murder, as well as other charges in the robbery of the antique store she and ex-husband, Albert A. Moers, owned and the shooting of three persons, early September brought news of a trial date of 20 October.
While McCoy sat in the county jail awaiting the proceeding, the Los Angeles Record of the 15th reported that he was giving boxing lessons to his fellow prisoners, but the next big news came the next day, when the Los Angeles Times informed readers that “Attorney H.L. Giesler had been retained as associate counsel” for the defense team. McCoy and friends assisting with his case, meaning raising funds, chose the new lawyer to replace Ralph D. Knickerbocker, who was partnered with Edward L. Davin in representing the defendant.
Harold Lee Giesler (1886-1962) hailed from Wilton, Iowa, a small town roughly between Davenport and Iowa City in the eastern part of the Hawkeye State. Known commonly as Jerry, the young man started law school at the University of Iowa, but, after a year, headed to Los Angeles to continue his legal studies at the University of Southern California. He did not complete his education, however, leaving to work for the well-known attorney, Earl Rogers, and then was admitted to the bar in 1910—a degree not being required—and became a member of Rogers’ firm.
Geisler proved to be an assiduous researcher, such as with the prominent case involving the McNamara brothers, accused of the domestic terror bombing of the Times building. In 1915 and 1917, he was a potential selection for City Prosecutor, but, otherwise, he was not very widely known to the public even as his reputation among the legal elite was growing during the period. Much later, however, Geisler would become very prominently in the public sphere and as a prominent and highly successful defense attorney for celebrities, including in the film and television industries.
The 22 September edition of the Record featured a profile by Barbara Miller titled “‘Kid’ M’Coy As He Looks After 40 Days of Waiting” and which claimed to be “the first interview since the whirl of excitement following the crime.” The writer observed that “the former pugilist appears remarkably self-possessed, carrying himself with a strange dignity—shoulders squared.” He told the journalist, “I have no doubt about the outcome of my trial. It was a suicide, and the truth will come out,” and, with tears in his eyes, he added, “it is an awful thing to accuse a man of killing the woman he loved. For I really loved her—” as he trailed off.
McCoy lamented the attitude of some friends who assumed his guilt and, when asked what he did with his time, answered that he read and wrote, while, after Miller inquired what he would do if acquitted, he stated “perhaps I might go on a farm . . . just as soon be the hired man as the owner—money is of no importance to me.” He also showed Miller a poem he write called “To Friends and Sympathiz[e]rs in This Hour of Need,” of which a sample is:
When a fellow’s in trouble—when he’s gone astray
That’s the time the real friendship goes out of its way
To help him and cheer him and bid him be square
And know stormy weather will sometime be fair
And the fault may be his and the anger be hot.
But the duty is ours, if we help him not.
So show if you’re made of the right kind of stuff,
Here’s a fellow in TROUBLE—that’s reason enough.
An obvious question is how autobiographical or revealing this verse was about its author, especially when McCoy wrote “the fault may be his and the anger be hot.”
The Times of the 27th reported that the burglary charge leveled against Albert Mors after he took a Mors antique shop stock certificate, jewelry and other items from the business and a complaint filed by his late ex-wife and an associate, was dropped at the request of the district attorney’s office. As for other jewels, Mors, as executor of Theresa’s estate, filed suit against McCoy, the Bank of Italy (where a safe deposit box opened by Theresa and McCoy contained items) and District Attorney Keyes, who took possession of the items.
The Los Angeles Illustrated Daily News of 8 October passed on the information that the trial date was pushed back to 8 December and the reasons were given as “the shortage of defense funds” and that a key witness, William G. Ross, who was one of the three persons wounded by McCoy when he went on the rampage at the Mors business, remained in serious condition as he recovered from his wound at a hospital. Meantime, an auction was held, starting on the 13th, for the inventory of the shop as it was clear that Albert Mors had no intention of continuing the enterprise.
In its number of the 17th, the Record reported that a pair of psychiatrists (“alienists” was the word in common usage) examined McCoy in the jail’s hospital ward following “new strange actions of the ex-ring champion” and he was said to be “very morose and on the defensive” when he entered the examining room. Journalists, wanting a photograph, were told “yes, if you will bring [Albert] Mors in here and take the two of us together.” He added that his antagonist “is doing all this,” but, if he was brought to the jail “I will dispose of him in such a way that he won’t cost the county a cent.” He then remarked,
I am constantly receiving letters from Teresa. Of course, they don’t know it in the jail, but she is being kept away from me by Mors. If it wasn’t for him she would have taken me home long ago. There is a letter downstairs for me now. Will you go down and get it?
This was taken as evidence of a mental disturbance, though it followed reports that “he marched up ad down the corridors of the jail with his underclothing pulled on over his prison uniform” or “stood at attention for several hours in front of his own cell door.” When a woman employee of the lockup appeared, McCoy called out, “hello, Teresa. I am glad you have come to take me home. I have been dressed and ready for hours.” Another time, he was found pacing his cell with a light candle in his hands, while on another occasion he complained of intense headaches. The paper also stated that his mother, who was in poor health, “has recently been confined in an asylum as hopelessly insane.”
The Times, however, noted that McCoy “is feinting and stalling . . . by pretending insanity” and cited the doctors for this interpretation, with a report cited as remarking, “if McCoy actually was redanged [deranged] to the extent that he pretends he is he would not do the things he does.” It was also stated by the psychiatrists, who’d examined him after his arrest, that “in almost every instance he does the right things at the wrong time and the wrong things at the right time.” If he was insane, they continued, he wouldn’t be as alert, nor defensive, while his self-control was too notable, so that “the entire absence of his having the character of insanity has convinced us that he is now merely malingering.” The insinuation was that the prisoner was further setting the stage for an insanity defense, which was the subject of media reports from the time of his arrest.
After a diamond broker and musician, Harry Katz, was found slain in early November and it was reported that he knew Albert and Theresa Mors, McCoy claimed that the murderer of Katz was the same killer of Theresa, telling the press “it was a hired job” when it came to the recent murder and asserted “that’s what happened in the case I’m mixed up in” as he continued “someone was paid for killing Mrs. Mors. It may have been the same man.” McCoy further insisted that “there was more than an ordinary business acquaintance between Mors and Katz,” but, when Albert was asked about this, he firmly replied that he only met the latter once, as couple of weeks before Theresa’s death when she agreed to exchange gems for $3,000 in goods from the store, but Albert scotched the deal insisting on a cash payment, instead. McCoy’s attempt to link the two homicides, however, is obviously notable. Obviously, this new angle offered by the prisoner is a significant one because he essentially clung to the same argument (and would later, as well) that Teresa committed suicide, but this claim that she was killed by a hit man is a clear contradiction to that story as well as his protestations of innocence.
In its edition of the 15th, the Illustrated Daily News noted that, while McCoy wanted to hire psychiatrists for his defense at trial, he lacked the funds, so his lawyers asked for an appointment of a quartet of alienists as public expense. This, however, Judge Charles S. Crail refused to grant, observing that there were already mental examinations that determined the defendant to be sane.
On 21 November, Mary Selby, the prisoner’s mother, died at a state institution for older women after spending weeks in a Glendale sanitarium—the report above that she was insane was evidently misconstrued with her placement. When she was buried a few days later at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale, McCoy was allowed to attend and told the press on returning to jail that he was sorry she could not live to see him declared innocent. The Times of the 25th quoted him as saying,
I never entered a battle [evoking his ring career] in which I had more confidence of emerging the victor. They can’t beat me.
The paper continued that “prison fare and prison discipline have cleared his complexion” and McCoy “looks out of a clean eye and his speech is clean.” Despite the recent reporting on his alleged mental issues, it was added that “there is some semblance between the Kid McCoy of today and the Kid McCoy of twenty years ago.” The Times added that, when he was taken to the cemetery and his mother’s burial site, the prisoner was silent, though he wiped away tears as she stood next to the recently dug gravesite before quietly returning to the LAPD vehicle to be conveyed back to his cell.
As the trial date loomed, the Record of 6 December reported that Keyes decided who would present the people’s case against the defendant “after three weeks of strenuous preparation.” The D.A. selected a trio of deputies “considered the most able courtroom lawyers in the district attorney’s office,” led by Charles W. Fricke (1882-1958). A native of Milwaukee, Fricke earned his law degree from New York University in 1902 and returned to Wisconsin to practice law in his hometown and then in Rheinlander, northwest of Green Bay.
Fricke came to Los Angeles in 1915 and, two years later, was appointed a deputy in the D.A. office and eventually became a chief deputy and then assistant district attorney, while earning, in 1923, his juris doctorate from Loyola University. In 1927, he was appointed to a Superior Court judgeship and, three years later, became a doctor of laws, also from Loyola, where he also taught for many years. In over three decades on the bench, Fricke presided over more death penalty cases than his colleagues, while also being well-regarded for his knowledge of the field, expressed through many writings on the law, including textbooks. An early prominent case was the first sexual assault trial of theater mogul Alexander Pantages, about which there is a post on this blog. He was also the jurist in the Sleepy Lagoon murder trial of 1942, drawing contemporary and later criticism for his conduct in the case, and imposed the death penalty to Caryl Chessman, convicted of kidnapping and rape, six years later.
A colleague of Fricke was Edward J. Dennison, of whom the Record concisely remarked he “has been the attorney of record in five hanging cases during the year 1924.” A prior post here regarding the coroner’s inquest following the St. Francis Dam disaster of March 1928 included mention of Dennison as among those questioning William Mulholland, chief engineer of the Los Angeles Bureau of Water Works and Supply, about the causes of the dam failure. The third prosecutor chosen was Charles W. Ostrom, who came to Los Angeles from New Jersey in 1922 and served two years in the D.A.’s office before returning to private practice.
Keyes’ deputy, Harold L. Davis, was handed the responsibility of general supervision of the prosecution and he, like his boss, ended up convicted of bribery in the notorious scandal involving C.C. Julian, who hired McCoy to provide security for his oil company’s gas stations just before the killing of Teresa. Davis spent a good deal of time and effort preparing the case against the defendant and, it was added, “will do whatever work is necessary on the case outside of the courtroom.”
There was some concern in the days preceding the opening of the proceeding that, because the last of McCoy’s many wives, Dagmar Dalgren, could not be located to testify for the defense, the trial might again be delayed. Her mother apparently reported Dalgren missing after two months of no contact, but it was soon found that the actor and dancer was in the Angel City, but working under an assumed name. The trial, therefore, was held, as scheduled, and jury selection ended with the dozen members including nine women and three men, as the Record of the 9th reported that “challenges from both sides were being directed at [the latter.]” It was added that Keyes told his deputies, “if McCoy doesn’t hang the people will have lost their case.” It is worth noting that women serving on California juries was a recent introduction, dating back to Los Angeles in 1911 and statewide within a half-dozen years of that. Four women were disqualified because of their opposition to the death penalty.
Significantly, the paper added that the defense, in its opening address to the newly seated jury, “plainly hinted that someone other than the ‘Kid,” and this seemed to hearken to the Katz case, “killed Mrs. Mors.” This was followed by the remark that, “if she didn’t kill herself, her husband was the guilty party, according to the attorneys’ statements,” though, as observed earlier in this post, Keyes, after a thorough check of Albert Mors’ whereabouts and alibi, was convinced that he had nothing to do with his ex-wife’s death. Moreover, McCoy was said to have offered incriminating comments to his mother, sister and others after Teresa’s death.
In any case, the Record continued that “McCoy himself adheres to the suicide story, and says he will tell on the stand a tale that will free him.” It has long been a general rule that defendants don’t testify on their behalf because the prime goal of the defense is to make the prosecution prove its case under the “innocent until proven guilty” dictum, though as some cases progressed and the situation grew dire for the defendant, desperate measures forced a change in that attitude. In this case, however, it was clearly part of the strategy from the outset to have McCoy testify, perhaps under the assumption that he would prove compelling, especially to a jury that was three-quarters women.
Lastly, it was recorded that,
His insanity defense is being reserved for the seven robbery and assault charges growing out of his Seventh street carnival of blood and bullets, where two men and a woman were shot and four men held up and robbed.
With this, we’ll halt here and return tomorrow with the tenth part of this post, so be sure to check back with us then!