And why was he found dying in the dark? The murderer, knowing that people were in the next cabin, waited on the scene for an extra second to turn out the light. Why?
At the time the jury and the press made an inspection of the Carma, we discovered that in the cabin where Wanderwell died, concealed by a rag, there was a hatch leading down into the hold and the bilges, easily raised from above or below. From the hold there were half a dozen other hatches opening into the cabins, the mess-hall, and out on deck. It is within the bounds of possibility that someone who hated Wanderwell and who knew the ins and outs of the schooner could have crept through the hold, raised the hatch, and shot the man, then escaped the way he came.
One cannot sensibly accept the theory that Wanderwell was killed by a visitor who showed his face at the porthole to at least four people. Wanderwell was a nervous, jittery character in spite of his imposing presence — he would never have turned his back on Curley Guy or any other of his numerous enemies. Yet he had obviously turned his back and had been leaning over backwards at the moment he was shot — the bullet entered his neck and ranged down to the heart. Was he, perhaps — at the request of someone he knew and trusted — engaged in reaching up toward his collection of scrap-books on a high shelf in his cabin when the shot was fired?
Various other interesting theories have been put forward by writers interested in the case. It has been seriously suggested that Wanderwell, realizing that he had sunk $22,000 in a useless hulk of a vessel and that he was at the end of his rope, had taken his own life with his .38 pistol but changing the suicide into the semblance of murder by previously tying the gun to a weight and dangling the weight out of the porthole, so that when in death he released his grip the gun would disappear forever into the muddy bottom of the harbor. This ingenious theory still does not explain why he should have shot himself in the back at such an angle, but one cannot say it was absolutely impossible. There are records in the medico-legal textbooks of men who have shot themselves three times through the head, who have stabbed and then shot themselves — and from seemingly impossible angles.
It has also been seriously suggested that one of the Wanderwell children, inspired by seeing movies of Bill Hart or Jack Holt or some other tough two-gun shooting hero of the time, had come upon their father’s loaded pistol and had pulled the trigger at the wrong time and place, causing an accidental death which was hastily hushed up by the crew members. Such things have happened, but in the light of the extensive grilling given the Wanderwell children it seems unlikely that they could have kept their lips sealed.
In my own opinion the true solution would have come, if at all, from a close study of the situation on board the schooner Carma. With no less than eight exceptionally attractive young women aboard, with Captain Wanderwell a handsome, dashing figure right out of a movie serial or a radio soap-opera, there could have been conflicts and frictions, romances and jealousies and broken hearts and revenges unguessed at by the thumb-fingered authorities. The Wanderwells were not close at the time — Aloha had months before made her own apartment next door to her husband’s in the place on Wilshire. And she had had no compunctions about leaving him on the ship, with all the pretty crew members, while she went up to Los Angeles to stay with her sister. Was it not within the realm of possibility that Wanderwell had tired of the pretty blond wife he had married (under the shadow of the State’s shotgun) and was carrying on with one or more of his charming feminine Argonauts? Could not that have led to disastrous results?
It is of course within the bounds of possibility that Curley Guy, or some other outraged and vengeful former voyager, did come down to the P. and O. docks that night, did appear at the Carma s porthole, and ask for Wanderwell. If so, that person may not have come armed, and may not have fired the shot. It seems, from this perspective, unlikely that a would-be killer would show himself so openly to the group in the social hall, even through a porthole — or that he would be seen some hours after the murder wandering around the waterfront area, asking his way back to Los Angeles.
These questions will never be answered now. The Los Angeles police force — and particularly its homicide squad — have in recent years been completely torn down and rebuilt, with even a Marine general brought in at one time to make some order out of the chaos. Many of the old-timers still remain in uniform, however, and at least two of them have admitted to me, off the record, that they have finally come to the conclusion that Wanderwell wasn’t killed by Curley at all, but by—
Guy himself, when released, put up a stout fight to resist being transported back to Australia — the boy wanted most desperately a chance to become an American citizen. The odds were against him, though he even paid a call on Judge Kenny, then living in a big beach-house at Malibu, and asked the jurist’s help. Kenny was friendly but dubious, and finally lent the young man a pair of trunks and took him out for a swim in the ocean. At the same time, as a guest of Judge Kenny’s next door neighbors, the district attorney of Los Angeles, Mr. Buron Fitts, was also swimming. Kenny held his breath, but Mr. District Attorney didn’t recognize the defendant his assistants had just failed to send to the gallows, and Curley Guy didn’t recognize the D.A., so everybody splashed around and had a wonderful time.
While changing back into his clothes, Curley Guy made a last appeal to the Judge. Couldn’t something be done to square off his American citizenship? After all, he had voted Democrat at the last election...
The comments of Judge Kenny at this admission that a citizen of the Commonwealth of Australia had voted in an American presidential election are not recorded. But the young man kept in touch with the judge through letters and postcards, even after he was deported. He popped up a few years later, as a fighter pilot for Haile Selassie in Abyssinia, against the far superior odds of Mussolini’s air legions. He reported in again at the beginning of World War Two — he had a job ferrying Hudson bombers from the U.S.A. to Britain. On his fifth trip he got into trouble off Newfoundland, and had only time to radio back “Ditching, tanks all empty, cheerio” before he went down into the cold bitter waves of the North Atlantic — not a bad end for a true soldier of fortune, who actually did many of the things and had many of the adventures to which the late Captain Wanderwell pretended.
But most of the questions are still unanswered. Carlton Williams, now a graying veteran newspaperman and still on the staff of the Times, remembers the Wanderwell case perfectly. He has just now stated to me that in his opinion there was never any doubt about the murder at all; Curley Guy pulled the trigger and that was that, and besides, Wanderwell probably had it coming to him. Mr. Williams had said to me that nobody who had been with him and Lieutenant Filkas at the time of the arrest of Guy in the house on Blake Street could have had any possible doubt about his guilt, there were certain statements and admissions made then which indicated the truth. It may be so — even on the track of a front-page story, reporter Williams would not tamper with the truth as he saw it.
But it is also important to remember that a man may be an enemy of society in a small way and not in a big way. A man may have something to hide — when confronted with the police and the press — and yet not be guilty of the major crime of which he is accused. Curley Guy had been cutting corners all over the lot since he jumped ship — there were half a dozen possible charges against him. He knew that he had had a fracas with Wanderwell, that he was in the country illegally, and that he had been piloting DeLarm’s plane on certain flights over the American-Mexican border... bearing cargo not to be officially scrutinized. He had a lot to cover up, if not a murder.