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This is the season when the macabre, insurance, and entertainment meet. In keeping with that spirit, this is a tale that starts with a dead, beautiful, young, blonde manicurist.  There’s a pair of double indemnity life insurance policies. And a philandering husband.

While this story may read like fiction, none of it is made up.  This makes it all the scarier. 

It was August 5, 1935 when 27-year-old Mary Busch James turned up dead — apparently drowned in the fishpond behind her La Crescenta home. Investigators surmised it was an accident believing she had gazed into the water when she suffered a “fainting spell” and fell forward, bashing her head on the concrete water basin on the way down.

But Mary was young, newlywed and pregnant, and her sudden passing was mysterious enough for a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy to show up and question her husband, Robert James (aka Major Raymond Lisenba). He was a mess. Sobbing convulsively, James told authorities Mary had frequent dizzy spells and would fall. He stated he had last seen his wife alive before he left for work at his barbershop in present day La Cañada Flintridge, (Spanish for 'The Ravine'). By the time he came home that evening with two friends, she was dead in the fishpond. 

Fortunately for James, he had purchased a $10,000 life insurance policy on Mary with double indemnity. Double indemnity is a provision in an insurance policy that provides a payout of double the policy's face value if the insured dies as a result of a covered accident. This seemed to assuage James’ pain as he was able to collect $21,400 (or about what would be $495,000 today) which then, like today, is mucho dinero.

Mary Busch James

But not all sat well with the sharp insurance investigator (as adjusters were called in those days). The adjuster discovered that the barber had been married five times and that his third wife had also died by drowning after being heavily insured. He tipped off the police. This is when, months after fading from the headlines, the scandal took off at the speed of light in true-crime magazines.

The police decided to bug James’ house. But instead of hearing a murder confession, they just overheard a lot of cooing and coitus between James and his 21-year-old niece. Yes, James was sleeping with, which of course really means he was having sex with, his niece!  Then, as now, this is incest, and under California law at that time was a felony offense. As such he was hauled in for questioning, and his interrogation was far more brutal and longer than what is allowed today- which led James to sing like a canary and confess. 

James told the authorities his first marriage ended in divorce when his wife accused him of sadistic sexual proclivities and extreme cruelty. Wife number two left him when the father of another woman ran him out of town suspecting James as the cause for his unwed daughter’s pregnancy.

Before wife number three, James’ mother died and left him, as sole beneficiary, a life insurance windfall. Apparently inspired by the possibility of more easy money, he married wife number three, another young, blonde named Winona Wallace. He persuaded her to buy a $14,000 life insurance policy. She trusted him. Wrongly.

During their honeymoon, she sustained a serious head injury from a car accident, while her husband was completely unharmed. He told the cops he had jumped out of the out-of-control vehicle just before impact. And the cops at the time believed him and thought nothing of the bloodstained hammer they found in the car’s back seat. Although Winonna’s head wound was grave, she pulled through, was discharged from the hospital after two weeks, with no memory of the accident.

Shortly thereafter, she drowned in her bathtub and James was able to claim she “accidentally drowned”.  Hammering the nail on the coffin, he even wrote to Dr. George B. Gilmore, the coroner, asking him to alter the death certificate so he could collect double indemnity – pointing out Winona's death had been due not merely to drowning, but that she must still have been dizzy from the head injury and that the car accident had been the contributing cause. Dr. Gilmore thought this a reasonable request—and James collected $14,000 from Prudential Insurance.

James married again. But immediately after their wedding vows, wife number four refused to undergo the physical required to take out life insurance on her and said to him, “People you insure always die of something strange.” James filed for an annulment that very day of their wedding.

As if this strange tale couldn’t get any weirder, James turned his attention to his nephew Cornelius Wright, a young sailor. He insured the young man with double indemnity in case of accidental death.  James then invited Wright to visit him while he was on leave and allowed his nephew to use his car. Sure enough, Wright was killed when he purportedly drove the car off a cliff near Santa Rosa, California. Reportedly, "the steering knuckle” of his car broke. Curiously, James sent a telegram to his sister informing her of her son’s death before it happened. The insurers paid - $5,000 which allowed James to purchase his barber shop in Los Angeles.

It was wife number five, Mary Busch, who proved to be his undoing. James drowned her in the bathtub and threw her body in the fishpond to make it look like an accident. Had it not been for an alert insurance adjuster, James would have gotten away with this crime as well.

After a five-week trial in the summer of 1936, the jury found James guilty of three, first degree murders and incest. He was sentenced to hang until dead. But he went on to fight his death sentence. His appeals made it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, though in 1942, the justice upheld his guilt in a 7-2 ruling. On the question of a fair trial (because of his marathon 48-hour police questioning), the justices upheld his confession despite the methods through which it was obtained.   

Robert James (aka Major Raymond Lisenba) Source: Wikipedia

In the two years he spent on San Quentin’s death row, James became very religious, so much so that other convicts called him “Holy Joe” and he led a Bible study.

On May 9, 1942, Robert James became the last man to be hanged in California. (Capital punishment became more “humane” with the adoption of the gas chamber soon after). Unfortunately, the rope was the wrong length; and it took over thirteen minutes for James to die- not a particularly long time as far as judicial executions go, but certainly not the instantaneous neck-breaking demise for which the government had aimed.  In legal context, justice was served.

Jorge Alexandria, writer, is the Vice President of Workers' Compensation Claims for the J. Morey Company, an Ori-gen company, and former Director for the U.S. Labor Department, 18th Compensation District. He is also an Army combat medic veteran who received a Master's degree in Public Administration. He can be reached at Riskletter@mail.com

The J. Morey Company handles business insurances, workers' compensation, personal lines, and employee group benefits.

Lonce Lamonte, journalist, www.adjustercom.com, adjustercom

lonce@adjustercom.com www.adjustercom.com