Crime Immemorial

In 1943, amid the bright lights and dark shadows of Hollywood, California, an actor who had been born into a world of privilege would meet a strange and rather ignominious end.

Gaspar Griswold Bacon, Jr., who later changed his name to simply David Bacon, was the scion of a wealthy and politically influential family in Boston, Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard, and in his college years was part of an acting group that also included then-unknowns Henry Fonda and Jimmy Stewart. David Bacon was also friendly with Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr., and had been to the White House on numerous occasions.

Despite the advantages afforded him by his upbringing, David Bacon seemed unsure of what he wanted to do with his life, and displayed something of a restless nature. After leaving school, he drifted to New York looking for acting work, supplementing his meager income by reportedly working as a gigolo, particularly for one wealthy British patron.

When New York didn’t pan out, he traveled to Texas, where he joined on as a U.S. Army Airforce Cadet for a time before being dismissed because of health problems. Shortly afterward, David went to Los Angeles to try to make it in the movies, a decision that would eventually lead to his undoing.

Not long after arriving, David married Austrian singer Greta Keller. The marriage was supposedly undertaken simply for appearances, as Greta was a lesbian and David Bacon was allegedly homosexual, though Greta did become pregnant a few years after the wedding.

A tall, good-looking man, David was able to get a screen test for Metro in 1939, and with help from Ginger Rogers, was able to secure further screen tests. Subsequently, he was signed by Howard Hughes in 1942, who planned to cast David Bacon as the lead in The Outlaw. In the end, though, Hughes decided to use another actor in the role, but did keep David Bacon busy with smaller roles in many of his films. Some have alleged that Bacon and Hughes were romantically involved during this period, but no definitive proof of this relationship is known to exist.

Despite his lofty connections, it did not appear that stardom was in the cards for David Bacon. In 1943, he took on the role of the Masked Marvel in the Republic serial of the same name, a part which he reportedly found humiliating, though it is today his best-remembered work.

In The Masked Marvel, David played the role of Bob Barton, who, as the titular hero dressed in a business suit and mask, is secretly fighting a Japanese saboteur. The role only went to David after four other actors had been injured while attempting it, and during one particularly demanding scene, where all the actors were injured except for David Bacon, the doomed actor made the offhand comment that he would probably get hurt going home in the car. Two weeks after production had wrapped on The Masked Marvel, this remark would prove to be eerily prescient.

On Sunday, September 12th, in Santa Monica, a woman named Mrs. Waterson noticed a car veering all over the road outside her home. Both she and another witness, a twelve-year-old girl named Lorraine Smith, watched the car narrowly miss a telephone pole, jump over a curb, and come crashing to a halt in the middle of a bean field. Witnesses then reported that a dark-haired man clad only in swim trunks came lurching out of the car before falling gracelessly to the ground.

Another neighbor, a man named Wayne Powell, approached the fallen man, who was weakly pleading, “Help me. Help me.” Powell asked what had happened, but by the time the words were out of his mouth, the man on the ground had fallen still, the victim of a small knife wound in his back that had punctured his lung. David Bacon, it seemed, had been murdered.

When news of the actor’s death reached his wife, the pregnant Greta reportedly collapsed and had to be rushed to the hospital. Sadly, as the investigation progressed, the stress proved too much, and less than two weeks after the murder, she gave birth to a stillborn child.

Though police were at first operating on the assumption that David had perhaps been killed by a random hitchhiker, the case soon began to take on a much weirder aspect.

Several witnesses who had seen David’s car at various points in the afternoon claimed that although David had been driving, there had also been two passengers, a man and a woman. Since the inside of the car was found awash in blood from David’s wound, and since there was no blood found on the outside of the car, it was assumed that one of these individuals had stabbed him. It seemed bizarre, however, that David could have been stabbed in the back in such close quarters and then kept on driving, and it also seemed strange that when David got out of the car after the accident, no passengers at all were seen.

Investigators found a few other puzzling clues inside the vehicle. Tucked into David’s wallet was a key, which was later discovered to unlock the door of a Laurel Canyon cottage that David had rented a short time before his death. Greta told police that this cottage had been rented in order to accommodate a man who was doing some work on their home, but police were skeptical of this story, because there was a trailer on the Bacons’ property that appeared to be in use by contractors.

As investigators delved a little deeper into the conundrum, they identified a retired doctor named Charles Hendricks, who owned the cottage and said that he had met with David Bacon less than two days prior to the murder in order to finalize the rental agreement. Dr. Hendricks claimed that at this meeting, David Bacon had been accompanied by an Austrian man who appeared about thirty-five years old and had not given his name. It was Dr. Hendricks’s opinion that the man was angry about something, or that he and David had been arguing shortly before his arrival, but he further stated that David Bacon had not seemed particularly perturbed.

As investigators questioned Greta and David’s other acquaintances, it also came to light that on the day of his murder, David had perhaps been on his way to the home of a friend, Geraldine Spreckles. He and Greta often visited Geraldine and made use of her pool, though on this particular occasion Greta had begged off because she hadn’t been feeling well. In fact, Greta claimed that David had told her he didn’t want to go to Geraldine’s house without her, but that when she woke up from a nap, David was gone. She also found it odd that he hadn’t taken their three dogs along, as he usually did when going to see Geraldine. This seemed to suggest that he perhaps had another destination in mind.

Also found in the car was a heavy blue sweater of the type that had once been given to athletes at Venice High School. The most unusual item, however, was a camera containing only a single photograph: a shot of David Bacon, sitting naked on a beach and smiling. Though police speculated that the photograph had perhaps been taken by David’s killer very shortly before his murder, they were unable to determine where the photograph had been taken or who had snapped the image.

Weeks later, a young man named Charles While confessed to the murder, but upon questioning, the suspect was found to know so little about the crime that police dismissed him as a crank.

From that point forward, no new leads emerged, and the mysterious murder of the erstwhile Masked Marvel passed into the realms of Hollywood legend.