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| Cherry de St. Maurice |
Someone strangled Cherry de St. Maurice, the
mistress of the mysterious Cherry Club, in her room on July 8, 1913. Cleo
Sterling, a girl in the resort, discovered her nude body face down on the floor
at 5:45 Tuesday afternoon. Maxine Meyers, another resort
girl, heard a scream at about 8 a.m. but ignored it, thinking it might be the
creak of a door.
Police Inspector Koening determined Cherry put
up a desperate struggle for her life. She had bruises on her arms and shoulders,
and the strangler’s fingers discolored her pretty pink neck.
Cherry always wore expensive jewelry and kept
valuables in her room, so the detectives supposed the motive was theft.
Newspapers reported she lived in constant fear of robbery.
In 1911, her piano player, Jack Palmer, teamed up with another
man to steal Cherry’s jewels. In between sets, Palmer piled a stack of jewelry
and other valuables by a window in Cherry’s room. Unfortunately, his accomplice’s
timing was off. He crawled through the window while Cherry came through the
door. Both parties ran away.
Later that year, an “insanely drunk” Japanese man named Iwasaki
shot it out with six patrolmen during an attempted robbery. No one got hurt in
the incident, but the papers had a good laugh poking fun at the lawyers and
businessmen who fled the club half-dressed.
Whoever said prostitution doesn’t pay didn’t
know Cherry de St. Maurice. She was a wealthy woman, worth an estimated $50,000
to $65,000 (almost $1.5 million today)—all of it made on her back. She owned a
35-acre tract of land upon which Oak Hall (another resort) was located, 50
acres on the Haggin Grant, some land near Lake Tahoe, and expensive
jewelry.
Coroner W. F. Gormley fixed the time of death
as after 12:30 a.m. Tuesday morning. Dr. C. B. Jones said the hydroid bone in
the neck was broken, and the left side of the face and chest were badly
congested.
The marks on the body led Gormley to believe the
murderer had kneeled on St. Maurice’s shoulders when he strangled her.
Detectives found her favorite doll unmolested
on the floor beside her. It was the size of a two-year-old baby and dressed in
a nightgown made of silk. The women at the resort said St. Maurice undressed
the doll and put the nightgown on it every night. The next morning, she would
dress it and set it in the chair like a child. Sometimes they would find
her rocking in the chair, crying while clutching the doll to her chest.
The people who knew her best said she loved
only two things, money and that doll.
Cherry came to California from Chicago or
Kansas—no one was certain.
She got her start as a chorus girl performing
in “Floradora” in 1913, then moved on to greener pastures, working as a
prostitute in Fanny Brown’s Palace on Second Street.
She saved her money and opened the Cherry Club,
one of the more opulent brothels in California, in 1907. It had ten bedrooms, a
large parlor, a fully furnished basement, and expensive artwork on the walls.
Later, she acquired Oak Hall from her ex-fiancé, John Francisco.
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| Cherry de St. Maurice |
It was said wine and senators flowed freely at the Cherry Club when the legislature was in session.
Life for the ordinary girls in the club wasn’t
as good. A detective from the Thiel Agency talked about the debauchery at Oak Hall,
a resort owned by Cherry de St. Maurice, when he staked it out in 1911.
“I was at Oak Hall several times,” said the
detective, “and saw girls 16 or 17 years old come from the dance hall and drink
at the bar. Some of them would wait around there before everybody, lifting
their clothes above their hips.
“There is a nightly average of twenty or thirty
respectable women and young girls who visit any of these places and not only dance
and drink, but frequently go up to the bedrooms. These bedrooms are used six or
seven times a night, sometimes at a dollar an hour.”
Many visitors bypassed the dance hall and went
directly to the bedrooms.
Cleo Sterling gave the killers up when
detectives gave her the “third degree.” She “let slip” the name Sam, or Sam
Raber, her paramour. That led police to Raber’s accommodations at the American
Apartments, where he shared a room with Jack Drumgoole.
The suspects had already hightailed it out of there,
but they left behind an important piece of evidence—a piece of tape—like the
one used to bind Cherry’s hands. Detectives said it was the same tape boxers
used to bind their hands, which tied the murder to Jack Drumgoole.
Aoki, the Japanese porter at the Cherry Club,
said the description of the two men matched the men he saw leaving the club at
8:00 Tuesday morning.
Detectives arrested the two men in San Diego
after they pawned some of Cherry’s jewelry. Detectives found $6,000 of Cherry’s
jewelry sewn into the tail of Raber’s coat.
Raber talked and talked, thrusting most of the
blame on Drumgoole, while Drumgoole refused to say anything.
Raber said he was “in on the deal,” but he
didn’t kill Cherry. They only wanted to knock her out while they made off with
her jewelry. They didn’t know the woman was dead until they read the paper the
next day. They thought they had just knocked her out. He never touched the
woman except to put his hand over her mouth to keep her from screaming.
Drumgoole pleaded ignorance.
“I know nothing about the murder of Cherry,”
said Drumgoole. “I don’t see why I was pinched Saturday. I don’t know where
Raber got the diamonds. I know nothing about it—nothing about it.” About all he
would say at the preliminary hearing was, “I was guided by [Raber] while we
were preparing the plans to rob Cherry,” which contradicted his statement he
didn’t know where Raber got the jewelry.
Drumgoole made a partial confession on August
1.
“We went to the Cherry woman’s room to rob, not
to kill her.” Raber and Cleo Sterling planned the job. He acted as the
muscle.
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| Sam Raber |
On the day of the robbery, Cleo helped Drumgoole and Raber blacken their faces with burned cork so they would look like Negroes.
“I held
Cherry,” said Drumgoole, “and Raber wrapped her mouth so she couldn’t make any
noise.”
A jury acquitted Cleo Sterling on October 31,
1913. She told the court she was going home to her people in Eureka and would
be a good girl unless people didn’t treat her right. Then she was going to “go
away again.”
“Fear and hunger drove me to the streets,” said
Cleo Sterling. She was hungry, and her man wouldn’t work. He beat her.
“Then I went on the street,” said Sterling. “It
was the easiest way” to make a living. She was eighteen and went to work in a
house in Lincoln.
Most recently, Raber and Drumgoole were living
off her earnings. Raber took what he needed without asking. Then, they
came up with the plan to rob Cherry because it seemed the easiest way to pick
up some fast money.
The court sentenced Raber to hang on January 2,
1914. Drumgoole received a life sentence at San Quentin Prison.
Drumgoole confessed he murdered St. Maurice before
Sam Raber was hanged in 1915, but it didn’t make any difference. The judge
ordered the execution to continue.
“The
plan agreed upon,” said Drumgoole, “was that I, being the physically stronger,
should seize Cherry and prevent her [from] making any noise.
“Rather, at no time, I touched her with force
or violence. I threw her upon the floor and held her for several moments while
Raber ransacked the room for money and valuables.
“Finally, Cherry...ceased her struggles.” She said
something to Raber, and he told her, “Keep quiet, and we won’t hurt you. She
was very quiet by that time, and I tied her feet. Cherry continued to talk, and
Raber continued to hunt for valuables.
“In holding her, owing to her struggles, I must
have used more force than intended.”
Jack Drumgoole died of tuberculosis in Folsom
Prison in December 1920. Just weeks before his death, he petitioned the State
Board of Prison Directors for parole.
Sam Raber died on the gallows at Folsom Prison on
January 15, 1915, after the last of his appeals failed.
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