Regarding a Murder

Bakersfield, 1947

A private investigator revisits an old murder, one that impacted him personally and directly.

“It was November 18, 1947. I had just turned eight and was in the Third Grade at Wayside Elementary School in the southern edge of Bakersfield.

Every day, my younger brother and I walked the three-quarters of a mile from our house in the Southgate area to the school. To avoid walking along the busy Casa Loma Highway, we crossed the irrigation canal on a narrow cement bridge, a hundred yards south of the Highway. It was near there that the grisly event occurred.

A kindergartener, a five-year-old girl was murdered the night before, battered innumerable times, the radio said, with a hammer.”