The Second Woman Executed in California’s Gas Chamber Killed the One Person Who Saved Her 

A gray-haired woman enters the gas chamber.  She is wearing a simple brown dress with a floral print.  She was offered a blindfold.  She refuses.  She sits down.  She looks straight ahead.  And when she finally speaks, her voice doesn’t tremble.  After 10 minutes she is gone. Her name is Louise Peet. But this is not just a story about a woman who was executed.

  25 years before that morning, Louise had already stood in a courtroom and been convicted of murder.  She served 18 years in prison.  Then the parole board reviewed her case, her behavior, and made a decision. They released her .  One journalist sent a written warning directly to this commission before they signed the dismissal papers.

  She warned them clearly, in writing, that Louise Peet’s dismissal would be a tragedy for someone.  The commission fired her anyway. The woman who fought the hardest for Louise to gain this freedom paid for it with her own life.  And what Louise did the moment the prison gates closed behind her was something that should never have been allowed.

Stay with us, because this story is just beginning. Welcome to the “Red Mark Files.” If this is your first time here, hit the subscribe button and the bell right now because this thing is moving fast and you won’t want to miss a single turn. Before we get to the crime, you should know who Margaret Logan was, because this story doesn’t make sense if you don’t understand the kind of woman she was.

Margaret Logan lived in Pacific Palisades, California, a quiet, well-kept community on the western outskirts of Los Angeles.  She was a retired social worker , and according to everyone who knew her, she was the kind of person who made a room feel calmer just by her presence. Neighbors described her as a warm, generous person who truly believed that people were worth fighting for.

  It wasn’t just her character.  This was her profession.  Margaret worked for decades in a field that required her to look at broken people and ask, “Can this person be helped? » She was trained to “ read” people, assess them, determine who needs support and who needs boundaries.  She was not a naive woman. She was not easy to deceive.

  That’s what makes what happened to her so deeply painful. At home, Margaret cared for her husband, Arthur C. Logan.  Arthur was an elderly man who had developed dementia.  The illness severely undermined his health. Margaret was his primary caregiver, taking care of his daily needs and running the household single-handedly.

  She needed help, real, practical help, someone in the house.  It was while working in the social field that Margaret first encountered the name Louise Peet.  Louise was then imprisoned, serving a life sentence for the 1920 murder of a wealthy mining engineer named Jacob C. Denton.  But Margaret didn’t see a convicted murderer when she looked at Louise’s case.

  She saw a woman who, in her opinion, had suffered from the flaws of the system.  So Margaret took action.  She wrote letters to the parole board .  She spoke on behalf of Louise.  She publicly demanded Louise’s release.  In 1939, the parole board agreed with her. Margaret wasn’t just celebrating.  She opened the front door, and Louise Peet walked straight into the house.

Margaret controlled every cent that passed through that house.  She considered it her responsibility. She had no idea that these same boundaries would one day make her a target. Now let’s talk about the woman who came through Margaret’s front door.  Her birth name was Lovie Louise Peet Prestlar. She was born on September 20, 1880, in Bienville, Louisiana.

  Her father was a famous newspaper publisher.  She grew up with money, education, and a respectable last name.  Outwardly, she had all the advantages a young woman in 1880 could dream of .  But something completely different was forming inside .  As a teenager, she was sent to a private school in New Orleans.  She was expelled at about 15 years old, and not for bad grades.

  She was caught stealing from her classmates.  The school also noted behavior that they considered highly inappropriate for a girl of her age.  This was not a mistake.  This was a behavioral model taking its first steps.  In 1903, she married traveling salesman Henry Bosley. Three years later, Bosley was dead.

  Authorities ruled it a suicide. This reportedly happened after he caught Louise with another man.  She was not yet 26 years old, and she was already a widow. She moved to Shreveport, Louisiana. According to later accounts, during this period she engaged in prostitution and allegedly stole from the men she dated.  By 1911, she arrived in Boston under a completely new name.

  She called herself Louise M. Gould.  She soon disguised herself again, this time as a 19-year-old heiress from Dallas named R. G. Rosalie, using this false identity to enter wealthy Boston society circles.  From Boston she set off through Texas.    A trail of thefts and unexplained deaths followed her. In 1915, she married Richard Peet in Denver.

  By 1920 they had divorced.  She ended up in Los Angeles, where she met Jacob K. Denton , a wealthy mining engineer and widower. She rented his house, gained his trust, and gained access to his finances.  In June 1920, Denton disappeared. When police searched the estate, they found his body walled up in a crypt under the basement stairs .

  He was shot in the back.  Louise was found guilty of his murder in 1921 and sentenced to life imprisonment. When Richard Peet heard the verdict, he committed suicide by shooting himself. Her second husband passed away.  Her first one went under remarkably similar circumstances.  In prison, Louise was a model prisoner: compliant, calm, charming.

She served 18 years and never once caused any problems for the staff.  The other prisoners adored her.  Years later, when she was on trial for Logan’s murder, those same women cried for her in the county jail. They did her hair.  They washed her clothes.  They bought her a new hat for the trial.  That’s how convincing Louise Peet was.

  Even those who knew she was a convicted murderer couldn’t help but love her. Two men are dead, one has a murder conviction in the case. A string of deaths ruled natural wherever she lived, and the parole board still opened the gates and released her.    What she did next was the most daring thing she had ever thought of.

  That’s what sets Louise Peet apart from most of the cases you’ll hear about on this channel.  She didn’t recruit anyone. She didn’t hire anyone.  She didn’t reveal her plans to a single soul. Court records confirm that Louise Peet acted entirely independently. No accomplices, no outside help, she didn’t involve anyone in the conspiracy.

    The only other adult involved in her life at the time was a man named Lee Borden Judson.  He was 67 years old and worked as a bank courier.  In May 1944, Louise secretly married him .  She kept the marriage a strict secret from her parole officer , from Margaret, from everyone, because the marriage violated the conditions of her release.

  Court records portray Lee Judson as a passive, meek man who had little understanding of what Louise was really doing.  He was not a planner. He was not an accomplice in any sense of the word.  In fact, he was just a convenient element of her cover.  The weapon Louise used was a .32 caliber revolver.  When investigators later traced its history, they discovered that it belonged to Emily D.

 Dwight Latham, a former inspector who had died while Louise was working at her home.  This weapon quietly passed from the Latham legacy into the hands of Louise. No witness ever heard Louise plan anything out loud. No notes were found .  No recordings of the conversations existed. Instead, Louise had what she had been building up for years: access to the house, control over Arthur’s care, intimate knowledge of Margaret’s finances, and a lifetime of experience in gaining the trust of people who had no reason to doubt her.

  She also had a made-up story ready. Arthur was mentally unstable and prone to violence.  Margaret will be leaving soon because she is too ashamed of her personal trauma to appear in public. And Louise?  Louise was simply a devoted caretaker who maintained order .  One person on the outside saw through all of this.

  Journalist Caroline Walker wrote directly to the parole board before Louise’s release in 1939.  Her warning was direct and clear. Louise Peet survived her entire life through theft, deception, and violence. And her release will be a tragedy for someone. The commission fired her anyway . Only standard checks were established during parole , and nothing more.

  And, as investigators would later discover, even these checks were conducted dishonestly. We are now delving into one of the most multi-layered cases this channel has ever covered.  Before we get to the night that everything changed, let us know in the comments what you think about that parole board’s decision .  Did they make the right decision?  And if you haven’t subscribed yet, do it now.

  The next chapter is about the night Margaret Logan was murdered, and you should watch it to the end. May 29, 1944.  Louise tells Lee Judson to pack his things.  She instructs him to check into a Glendale hotel for the night.  She tells him that she needs to meet with Margaret privately, just the two of them, to review the finances alone.

  Lee does what he is told. He is settling in.  He is waiting.  That night, Margaret Logan and Louise Peet are in a house in Pacific Palisades together.    There is no one else, and this is the last confirmed moment that anyone outside this house saw Margaret Logan alive. No neighbor spoke to her after that date. No friend received a phone call.

No family member heard her voice again.  Margaret Logan, a woman who spent her entire career believing in people, simply disappeared from the world.  Court records do not contain eyewitness accounts of what happened inside that house.  No one survived to tell about it.  But what was later confirmed by physical evidence and autopsy results leaves very little room for imagination.

Margaret Logan was shot in the back of the head with a .32 caliber revolver.  Her skull was fractured, consistent with blunt force trauma inflicted in addition to the gunshot wound.  She died in the house where she had lived for many years.    The house she opened for Louise Peet.  A home she thought was safe. No neighbors heard the screams that evening.

    There were no signs of a struggle visible from the outside .  There were no calls to the rescue service .  No one came to the door.    The street was quiet. The house was silent.  And Louise Peet was still inside.  Two days later, on June 1, 1944, Louise and Lee Judson moved into the Logan home together .

  They brought their things.  They settled into the estate as if it had always been theirs. No explanation was given to neighbors watching from across the street. Four days later, on June 5, 1944, Louise contacted Arthur Logan’s doctors.  She convincingly proved that Arthur’s condition had deteriorated to the point that he required immediate hospital treatment.

  Arthur was sent to Paton State Hospital, a facility for the mentally ill. Arthur was an elderly man.  His dementia had progressed significantly.  He could not clearly explain what he knew or what he had witnessed.  He was placed in a ward and effectively removed from the entire situation.  When Arthur was gone, Louise had complete control of the house, finances, mail, and history.

  When the neighbors started asking about Margaret, Louise had a ready answer.  She told them that Arthur, in a fit of aggression caused by a mental disorder, attacked Margaret and bit her nose so hard that her face was disfigured.  She said that Margaret was too shy to appear in public and had gone to get plastic surgery. The story was detailed.

  She was emotional.  It was so intimate that most were embarrassed to ask further questions.  Some neighbors believed it.  Others found it strange but had no evidence to dispute it.  So the questions became fewer, and the weeks passed. No one on that quiet street knew that Margaret Logan had never left the estate.

  Court records and forensic examination confirmed that she was buried in a shallow grave in the yard of her own home under an avocado tree deep in the plot.  She lay there for 6 months while Louise Peet slept in her house, spent her money, and told the world that she was just recovering.  For 6 months, Margaret was in the ground , Arthur was in a hospital ward, and Louise Peet was living her life.

  This is the hardest thing to realize.    A few days after Margaret’s death, Louise began writing checks in her name. Court records confirm that she used Margaret’s bank accounts to pay for household expenses, personal needs, and everyday purchases .  The money disappeared unnoticed.  No one at the bank expressed concern. Meanwhile, Louise was faking something else.

Margaret’s handwriting in her own parole reports .  As a condition of her release, Louise was required to submit monthly reports to her parole officer .  These reports were to reflect her living conditions, employment, and behavior.  Louise filled them out in Margaret’s signature handwriting to make it look like someone else, a responsible member of the community, was checking everything.

  She sent them by mail. Each of them passed without any issues. Meanwhile, Louise and Lee Judson lived in the Pacific Palisades property, out of hiding.  To anyone passing by, they looked like a married couple looking after the home of an elderly woman who was temporarily absent. Louise continued to tell her neighbors about Margaret’s so-called recovery.

The details changed somewhat over time , but the basic story remained the same .  Margaret was recovering, shy, and not ready to meet anyone.  At Patton State Hospital, Arthur Logan had no visitors— none, not from Louise, who called herself his devoted nurse, nor from anyone else. He lay in that ward alone for many months.

  On December 6, 1944, Arthur Logan died at Patton State Hospital. Louise arranged for his body to be donated to science.  There was no funeral, no burial, no ceremony, no place to mourn the deceased.  Both Logans were gone, and Louise was the only one left with any rights—albeit fraudulent—to the house, the bills, and the history.  Six months, two deaths, no official alarm.

  Louise Peet has done this before. She expected the world to turn away again.  This time, one small detail was going to end it all .  The matter did not start with a caring neighbor. It didn’t start with a missing person report.  It did n’t start with a phone call from a concerned family member.  It started in a bank.  An employee who was checking the Logans’ accounts found a discrepancy.

  A check was presented for payment, and the signature on it did not match the established accounting records of Margaret Logan. The handwriting was similar, but something was wrong.    At almost the same time and quite independently, Louise’s parole officer noticed something unusual in the monthly reports filed on Louise’s behalf.

  The handwriting on the last submitted documents did not match Louise’s handwriting in her personnel file.  Again, it looked similar, but something was wrong.  Two separate agencies, two separate signals— both ended up in the same place: the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office .  The case was assigned to Walter Lenz, chief investigator of the district attorney’s office.

  He picked up all the parole reports filed before and after June 1944 and placed them side by side.  His conclusion was unequivocal. Every report submitted after June was written in a different hand—not Louise’s hand nor Margaret’s documented handwriting, but a conscious, if imperfect, imitation of both.  This finding triggered an official investigation.

    The next stage was led by the head of the homicide department, Ted Brown.  He acted carefully and quietly so that Louise would not suspect that she was being watched.  He interviewed neighbors around the house in Pacific Palisades. The picture that appeared before him was the same for every house on this street.  No neighbor had seen or spoken to Margaret Logan in months.

Brown then contacted Patton State Hospital staff regarding Arthur Logan.  Their records confirmed that he died without receiving a single visitor during his entire six-month stay.  None. Not from Louise, nor from anyone else. Two people associated with Louise Peet have disappeared.  One has been confirmed dead at the facility.

  No one else has seen it for half a year.  And Louise lived comfortably in their house. Investigators didn’t have the body yet.  Instead, they had suspicious handwriting, a questionable check , a woman no one had seen in months, and a 1921 case that made all of these details seem painfully familiar. Louise’s conviction for the murder of Jacob Denton was in the archives.

  This pattern was obvious to anyone who wanted to see it. Yet it took six months and two independent signals from institutions before a formal investigation reached Louise Peet’s doorstep.  Every week of delay had its price.  And by December 1944, this price could no longer be changed. Investigators now had enough evidence to act.

  Louise was called in for questioning, but it was no ordinary call from a detective.  Sheriff Gene Biscayluz personally came to escort her to the Los Angeles Hall of Justice .  This detail is important.  The investigators wanted to take her away from home and make her feel from the first minute how serious this case had become .

  Louise went with him.  While she sat in the Hall of Justice being questioned, the police searched the Logans’ Pacific Palisades estate without her.  They methodically inspected the house, went out into the yard, passed the flower beds, and headed to the back of the lot.  Near a large avocado tree, investigators noticed a patch of land that was different from the surrounding area.

  The soil was dug up and covered over again, but not naturally. They started digging. It took a little time.  On December 20, 1944 , approximately 6 months after Margaret Logan was last seen alive, police discovered her decomposed body in a shallow grave.  The body was identified as Margaret Logan. The autopsy confirmed everything the evidence had already indicated.

Gunshot wound to the back of the head, skull fracture, death occurred approximately 6 months ago, body buried in the yard of her own house while Louise Peet lived in it, spent her money and told neighbors that she had gone for treatment. When Louise was presented with this physical evidence, she made a statement. She admitted to hiding the body but denied pulling the trigger.

Her version was this: Arthur Logan, during a psychotic episode, beat Margaret and shot her.  Louise claimed she panicked .  She was afraid that because of her previous criminal record, no one would believe her version of events.  So instead of calling for help, she buried the body and said nothing.  Lee Judson was arrested with her.

  Within days, investigators determined that there was insufficient evidence against him.  He was released. The next day, Lee Judson went to an office building in downtown Los Angeles and fell from the ninth floor.  He did not survive. Louise Peet was left alone.  Her husband is gone.  Her legend completely collapsed , and for the second time in her life she found herself at the center of a murder charge.

  What happened in court is not exactly what most expect.  On April 23, 1945, the trial of Louise Peet began in Los Angeles. The prosecution made one decision at the very beginning that proved to be more weighty than anything else presented in the courtroom.  They presented the full transcript of Louise’s 1921 trial for the murder of Jacob C.

Denton.  They then compared the two cases before the jury.  1920: trusting relationships, vulnerable benefactor, access to finances, forged checks, sudden disappearance, body found hidden in the grounds with a gunshot wound to the back. 1944: trusting relationships, vulnerable benefactor, access to finances, forged checks, sudden disappearance, body found buried on the property with a gunshot wound to the back of the head.

  Court records described the jurors, 11 women and one man, as deeply impressed by the spectacle of these two juxtaposed cases.  The method has not changed. Only the victim has changed.  Louise decided to testify in her own defense.  Witnesses in the courtroom later described her as calm, eloquent, and remarkably poised on the stand.

  She spent four days laying out her version of events.  Her basic statement remained the same as it had been since her arrest.  Arthur Logan killed Margaret during a psychotic episode, and Louise buried the body out of fear, not guilt. The jury went into deliberations.  On May 31, 1945, they announced their verdict: guilty of first- degree murder.

  There was no recommendation for clemency or appeal for leniency. The charm that once moved the jury in 1921 did not work in this hall .  While the judge prepared to deliver his sentence, Louise Peet sat at the defense table reading a book.  Witnesses said she could barely look up .  She was sentenced to death.  Over the next two years, her lawyers filed numerous appeals.

Each of them provided grounds for a new trial or a reduction in sentence. Each of them was rejected.  California courts reviewed the case at all levels and each time upheld the verdict .  There are no courts left for Louise Peet . After being sentenced in 1945, Louise Peet spent about two years on death row. All this time she never confessed, not once.

  She gave the same answer to everyone who sat down across from her and directly asked her this question .  She didn’t kill Margaret Logan. She gave the same answer about Jacob Denton 25 years ago. Her story never changed. The confession never came.  Her last public statement, reportedly made to another inmate before her transfer to San Quentin, was delivered in the same calm tone she had spoken in throughout her life.

  Needless to say: ” I have never killed or even harmed a person, but the truth is elusive.”    On the morning of April 11, 1947, Louise woke up in San Quentin.  She didn’t sleep well.  She refused the sedative.  She wrote several farewell letters. Their contents were never fully made public. She only had a cup of coffee for breakfast. Nothing more.

  She wore a simple brown dress with a floral print. Simply.  Considered. She asked not to be blindfolded. Before entering the gas chamber, Louise Peet told the group of executioners: “I am ready.  I was ready a long time ago .  “I’m in a great mood.”  She entered the gas chamber unaided, without any signs of agitation.

  She sat down .  She looked straight ahead.  A few minutes after the cell door was sealed, she met the gaze of Warden Duffy through the window and silently uttered her last words: ” Let’s go.”  At 10:13 a.m., cyanide pellets fell into the acidic solution under her chair.  Death was confirmed approximately 10 minutes later . Louise Peet became only the second woman to be executed in a California gas chamber.

As for accomplices, there were none.  Lee Judson, the only person involved in the crime, died the day after his release.  Louise faced the gas chamber just as she had committed her crimes—all alone. When the truth finally surfaced, Margaret Logan’s fortune was but a shadow of what she had created.  Six months of forged checks and fraudulent expenses emptied the accounts she had carefully managed her entire life.

  The house she opened with good intentions was home to the woman who killed her.  Arthur Logan died in a hospital room, alone. No funeral, no grave, no one at his bedside.  His body was donated to science at Louise’s behest—the final act of control by a woman who ruled everything and everyone around her until the very end.

  This is the hardest truth this case leaves behind. Margaret Logan fought for years for the freedom of Louise Peet.  Her empathy, her belief that people could change—these were not weaknesses.  These were the qualities that made her an exceptional specialist in her work.  And it was these qualities that Louise used most ruthlessly. Journalist Caroline Walker predicted this.

She wrote about it.    The parole board read this but released Louise anyway. Margaret paid for this decision with her own life.  What moment in this story struck you the most? Was this a decision by the parole commission ? A journalist who no one listened to? Or Margaret, buried in her own yard by the woman she trusted? Write about it in the comments below.

  I read every one of them. If this is your first time on this channel, click the subscribe button right now.    The next case is already waiting, and it is no less profound than this one.