The Newport Harbor Murders Revisited

On March 15, 1947, at 11:45 PM, the weather was probably between 50 and 60 degrees on a typically starry night. Walter E. Overell, 62 and his wife Beulah, 57 were aboard their 47 foot Yacht, the Mary E, which was moored in the harbor, when an explosion aboard shattered the still of the night while many of the residents were either in bed asleep or about to go to bed and sent the yacht to the bottom of the shallow harbor. The Explosion was heard by Newport Beach police officers Lawrence Goddard and George W. Calihan who were on patrol in the area. They saw the boat sinking and called the fire department. The two officers saw Bud and Louise running hand in hand near Bay Avenue and A Street. The boat was boarded at 11:52 P.M. by Robert Myers of the Newport Beach Fire Department and he found the bodies of Walter and Beulah Overell. Members of the Coast Guard arrived shortly and took the bodies to the Baltz Mortuary. At this point, murder was not suspected. A preliminary autopsy found the Overells were killed by injuries to their heads which could not have been caused by the explosion. The Overell's daughter Louise and her boyfriend, George (Bud) Rector Gollum, were the last to have been aboard with them. Unexploded dynamite was found aboard and evidence was found that Gollum, along with Louise, had purchased the dynamite the day before the explosion. They were arrested and charged four days after the murder. Evidence was overwhelming. The motive: The Overells opposed the wedding and told Gollum and Louise that Louise would be disinherited if they wed without their approval. The Overells were wealthy socialites who lived in a mansion in Flintridge. Beulah Overell, Louise's mother and Wilhelmina Rector Stomel, Bud Gollum's mother, had been friends while attending church together before either were married. The Rectors, Bud's grandparents and Beulah Overell's family, the Jungquists were longtime friends. Both families were wealthy. Bud and Louise knew each other since both were children and got better acquainted when he was in the navy. Both parents urged Louise to write to him; she reluctantly did so. Louise was an unwanted and unloved child ignored by her parents while growing up. Bud was a social misfit and both parents thought that they might provide some socialization for the two of them. Bud saw Louise as his ticket to a life of the idle rich and when he was discharged, they became engaged and sexually involved. Bud had always been around wealthy people and thought he had a right to the kind of life his grandparents and their friends had. Louise had no love for her parents and Bud gave her the first attention and love, or what she thought was love, which she ever had. When the parents threatened to take that away from her, Bud had little problem in convincing her to remove her parents from being the obstacle to the life that she deserved In spite of the overwhelming evidence, the young couple was acquitted after a long trial. The defense attorneys attacked every witness, every piece of evidence and gained an acquittal. It was a miscarriage of justice of the proportion of the OJ Trial and the recent Casey Anthony trial. During the trial and the exchange of letters, a breach in their relationship arose and they never saw each other again after the trial. Louise ended up dying of alcoholism while contemplating suicide while in her second marriage. Her son, by a previous marriage to a Los Angeles policeman, inherited $28,000. Her second husband had spent the rest. Bud ended up dying alone in Wasilla, Alaska after having done prison time for stolen auto and growing marijuana. The book traces their disastrous post-trial life leading into the book and then their relationship leading up to the murder. It follows their relationship in jail and critiques the investigation, the trial and the verdict from an ex-cops vantage point.