Man kills son

 

Jan. 7, 1958
Los Angeles

"Dear mother," the note from 9-year-old Jimmy began.

They weren't his words, of course. They were dictated by his father, David James Darr, a 34-year-old machinist who was apparently holding a .45 to his son's head.

Jimmy told his mother that he hated visiting his father; the boy was terrified of him. But the judge ruled that as part of the divorce and child custody agreement, Jimmy had to go, so he did.

"Once, before he went, Jimmy told me: "Mommy, if I call you up and tell you something, don't believe it because he makes me do it," Eula, 28, told The Times. "I told him, 'I know, darling, I know.' "

David and Eula had been married in Yuma, Ariz., in 1947, but 10 years later, whatever love there might have been had turned into a nightmare of hatred and legal battles that led to a February 1957 divorce.

According to The Times, David threw battery acid into the car of a man who testified on Eula's behalf in the divorce. He put sugar in the gas tank of another friend's car, broke into Eula's home and slashed the furniture, splashed her house with red paint and put rock salt on the lawn to kill it.

Then there was the court fight over Jimmy. Eula petitioned the court to have alternate visitation rights canceled because David kept threatening to kill her and their son. One time, he sent Jimmy back home to Colton, where Eula worked in a drugstore, carrying a bullet for his mother.

On Jan. 4, 1958, a Saturday, David called and threatened to kill Jimmy and himself unless Eula came to see him. "Then he called yesterday and said it was too late, that he was going to do it," she said of his last phone call, which came on Sunday.

She called the deputies at the sheriff's Norwalk station and asked them to check at David's apartment, 12616 Lambert Road, where David lived with a teenage son from a previous marriage. But deputies couldn't find Jimmy or David.

About 2:30 a.m., Jimmy finished his note and his father shot him in the head with the .45, then went into the bathroom and shot himself. A neighbor said she heard gunfire and moaning, but added: "I haven't got a telephone yet and I didn't know what to do."

David and Jimmy weren't discovered until the next morning, when Abner M. Fritz, a teacher who lived in an adjoining apartment, broke in after seeing a bullet hole in his bathroom wall and a .45 slug in the bathtub. He was joined by David's teenage son, who had spent the weekend with a relative.

Jimmy was lying between a bed and a wall while David was sprawled in the bathroom, The Times said. They both died a few hours later at General Hospital.

"I wish now that I had gone to him when he asked me to," Eula wept. "Then maybe he would have killed me instead of shooting Jimmy."

Although The Times never followed up on this story, California death records show that Eula Fae Chabot died March 3, 2000. She was 70.

Email me       

Comments

[Mary]

This one's going to haunt me for a long time.