Let the record show: In 1968, Santa Rosa achieved Peak Pepper. That was the year when the local Grand Poobahs gave a badge to our town character and proclaimed she was henceforth the town marshal. What could possibly go wrong?
This is part two of the story of Pepper Dardon. Her backstory was hashed in "I, PEPPER" which I urge you to read before continuing. Starting sometime in the mid-1950s she became a noisy and (mostly) cheerful fixture around the downtown district. How well someone got along with her depended on who they were and which Pepper they met. "She could be obnoxious or sweet, depending on the street persona she adopted that day," her 1992 Press Democrat obituary noted.
She was invariably kind to children who seemed to view her as silly, a grownup who didn't act like the usual sort of adult and wasn't much taller than they were. Older kids might think she was scary or mean because she teased them. Teenagers with smart mouths sometimes recognized her as one of their own ilk.
If you were a store clerk or bank teller having a busy day you did not want to see Pepper coming through your door. "Santa Rosa merchants, who endured her tirades as she made her daily rounds, considered her either a charming looney or a public nuisance," the PD obit also recalled. She was sure to do something disruptive; "Topping it all off, she yodeled, sang and played the harmonica. But not very well." Should there be a candy jar on the counter she would shoplift fistfuls to hand out later - see above, Children: Kindness to.
The men and women who were active in social clubs and charities appreciated her as an indefatigable volunteer. Pepper's self-appointed downtown duties included collecting money for good causes, which often were a sizable portion of all money raised during a fundraising drive. She sold lapel pins for the Lions Club's White Cane Day, ersatz red poppies for the VFW, candy for the Santa Rosa Jewish Women's Club (she wasn't Jewish), tickets to the Kiwanis pancake breakfast, rattled donation cans for the American Cancer Society and probably begged donations for still other groups forgotten.
When the campaign was over and the club held its inevitable self-congratulatory luncheon Pepper was often invited because of her outsized contribution. For a long time those orgs treated her as something like their own poster child, as did the Chamber of Commerce and particularly the Police Department.
"There's no question she got away with a lot. She was a kind of mascot to our smaller-town Police Department. The officers treated her like a pet." Gaye LeBaron wrote in a must-read 2005 column. Even before the town marshal gag, Pepper was chummy with the officers personally and they did favors for each other; cops would give her a lift in patrol cars and she would run errands for them, such as fetching a raincoat from the police station, according to a different column by Gaye. Nor did it hurt that she prowled downtown with a sharp eye for lawbreakers, like the top elephant enforcing good behavior on her unruly herd. Woe to anyone she caught jaywalking or dropping a gum wrapper - people were astonished such a tiny woman could holler so loud.
But Pepper had no greater champion than the Press Democrat, particularly columnist Gaye LeBaron. Pepper's birthday was usually heralded in the column, as were the impressive sums she collected for the fundraiser de jour. There were items when she broke her thumb and when she adopted a kitten. After husband Paul lost his job of twelve years as Occidental Hotel janitor, readers learned the Lions Club passed the hat and raised $36 to help them out. Updates followed as he was hired twice again as a janitor and lost those jobs as well. At one point an anonymous caller sniped to LeBaron's editor she should "stop talking so much about Pepper."
It was early in 1968 when a Pepper fan wrote to LeBaron suggesting they lobby to have Pepper chosen as Grand Marshal for that year's Rose Parade: "Riding in an open car down Fourth street would perhaps repay her in some small way for all the time she's donated." Gaye liked the proposal and hoped Pepper would get the nod - but a quirk of fate caused her to end up as a different kind of marshal instead.
The rest of this article can be read at the SantaRosaHistory.com website. Because of recurring problems with the Blogger platform, I am no longer wasting my time formatting and posting complete articles here. I will continue to create stubs for the sake of continuity, but will be publishing full articles only at SantaRosaHistory.com.
- Jeff Elliott
Labels: 1969, 1975, 1992, Pepper, rose festival
She was funny, she was annoying, she was quirky and she terrorized a generation of kids. Her name was Pepper.
Everyone who lived in Santa Rosa between (roughly) 1955 and 1985 knew her, if not through a personal encounter then from Gaye LeBaron's columns where her antics were often chronicled. And although she passed away in 1992 Pepper has achieved a kind of immortality via social media, particularly in the FaceBook nostalgia groups where stories about her pop up regularly.
Pepper was called the "town character" but that doesn't ring quite true, as that usually describes someone genuinely eccentric. In Pepper's day Santa Rosa did have those sort of people too, such as the woman who burned off nervous energy by walking miles every day wearing ballet tights, a scarf and floppy hat. Or the Russian man who handed out malt balls wrapped in handwritten prayers and liked to perform scenes from Othello.
No, Pepper was better described as the town jester - it was as if she thought the Marx Brothers' movies were instructional films. She did things she hoped people would think funny. She would yodel in the Exchange Bank or into the microphone at a store's checkout register. She would stand next to the Post Office and ask people where the Post Office was. She would pretend to direct traffic at the corner of Mendocino and Fourth. She would plop herself in the backseat of cars waiting for a stoplight to change and expect the driver to take her somewhere. Once she pulled that stunt with a convertible and when they drove down the street she royally waved at pedestrians. They waved back.
Another of her hallmarks were the cornball jokes that would only tickle the funnybone of a very young child. "Squirrels are looking for you. They think you're nuts!" Instead of saying goodbye she might make the lame quip, "If I don't see you in the mattress, I'll see you in the spring." And then there was her perpetual favorite: "Hey, you dropped something. Your footsteps."
She would be considered a little person today, about the height of a smallish 12 year-old girl. It's not cruel to say she dressed clownish (but not always) and her usual attire was so garish she appeared to glow radioactive. She wore neon-bright Hawaiian blouses and shirts, muumuus so baggy she could have shoplifted half a store underneath, and invariably had children's moccasins on her feet with plastic flowers poking out of her hair. After she had gall bladder surgery in 1970 she carried her 45 gallstones in a jar to show people.
Gaye LeBaron wrote a further description in a 2005 column: "She was a sight to behold -- built like a fireplug, heavy on the makeup, including glitter and those gold stick-um stars the teacher puts on very good tests; heavier yet on the perfume, which she applied from test bottles on the counters at Rosenberg's and the several drugstores on Fourth Street."
LeBaron knew Pepper better than anyone else, and that column is a wonderful tribute which I urge you to read straightaway. "People have always had mixed feelings about Pepper," she wrote in an earlier profile. "Some people, sad to say, hate her. I have mail to attest to that. But mostly people grin at her, shake their heads in wonder, and pass by amused because that's just Pepper and everybody knows Pepper."
Judging by comments on social media over the years the jury's still out. Folks (like me) who weren't around in her heyday fifty years ago only know her through anecdotes, so it's easy for us to view her as a goofball who made downtown Santa Rosa a fun place to be. But to those growing up here a common complaint was "she scared me to death." To kids Pepper could seem crazy and acted like a police-sanctioned bully.
The rest of this article can be read at the SantaRosaHistory.com website. Because of recurring problems with the Blogger platform, I am no longer wasting my time formatting and posting complete articles here. I will continue to create stubs for the sake of continuity, but will be publishing full articles only at SantaRosaHistory.com.
- Jeff Elliott
There were 49 prisoners awaiting execution but only one was a woman. That woman was Iva Kroeger.
On May 1, 1963 she was sentenced to death for the murders of Mildred and Jay Arneson and sent to the California Institution for Women at Frontera (AKA Corona State Prison) to await a decision on her appeal to the California Supreme Court. And to the surprise of many, the justices ordered her sentence be reconsidered on a technicality.
The court agreed her trial was fair and did not dispute her first degree murder conviction. But when giving instructions to the jury during the penalty phase of the trial, the judge erred by telling them a sentence to life imprisonment would make Iva eligible for parole, so there was a chance - however microscopic - she could be back on the streets in as little as seven years. Iva soon found herself headed back to San Francisco for a new (partial) trial.
But first: More medical reports - and guess what? The new experts contradicted all the previous experts!
Doctors at the state prison declared Iva had "chronic brain syndrome and central nervous system syphilis." Her history of syphilis came up during the trial. A quarter-century earlier she was treated at a hospital and the medic at the San Francisco jail infirmary thought she had signs of paresis, which is a kind of chronic brain inflammation often found in late neurosyphilis. A doctor at the trial testified he didn't believe it because she didn't display the typical symptoms: "I won't mention them unless you make me," he said, "because she might have them tomorrow if I do."
Iva was also seen by two new court-ordered psychiatrists. The three who had examined her before the trial said in court she was a “pathological liar” and a criminal sociopath putting on a show in hopes of avoiding punishment. The new crop of experts diagnosed her as fully psychotic.
Now certifiably physically and psychologically impaired, Iva was once again before Judge Neubarth, who had sentenced her to death almost exactly a year prior. This time she had two lawyers, one of them being famed litigator Melvin Belli whose law firm had also represented her in the damage suit over the injury that caused her incurable limp, which seemed to come and go.
Neubarth and the prosecutor had already agreed it would be a bench trial, as she was such a "mental defect" it would be inhumane to risk a new jury condemning her to death because such a verdict would be easily overturned on appeal. With no objections from her lawyers, Judge Neubarth reduced her sentence to life without parole. "When I say life, I mean life," Neubarth stated. "She should never be returned to society. I am going to file a special report in which I will urge that she never be released."
The hearing was over in 25 minutes and the shortened proceedings deprived Iva of a stage where she could perform for her fan club in the gallery. Still, she "...trundled into court in a wheelchair with her left leg bandaged heavily (apparently her own idea and not that of Corona physicians)," according to the San Francisco Examiner.
Afterwards she spoke with reporters in the hallway. "I never had a trial...I don't believe the judge knowed the truth. I have 108 witnesses to prove my innocence."
The rest of this article can be read at the SantaRosaHistory.com website. Because of recurring problems with the Blogger platform, I am no longer wasting my time formatting and posting complete articles here. I will continue to create stubs for the sake of continuity, but will be publishing full articles only at SantaRosaHistory.com.
- Jeff Elliott
The little boy would not wake up. It wasn't as if he was short of sleep; the night before, seven year-old Michael Anderson said he was getting tired not long after eating a few pieces of his Hallowe'en candy. His parents assumed he was just overcome from the excitement of trick-or-treating. But now it was morning and a schoolday, so it was time for him to get out of bed. Except his mother could not wake him up.
Then she noticed he had vomited on his pillow while asleep.
Instead of taking him to Sheppard Elementary, she rushed Michael to Memorial Hospital.
Blood tests revealed he had consumed an overdose of barbiturates. Also, he had aspirated some of his stomach contents, which put him at risk of death. He was in a coma for over 24 hours.
Elsewhere in Santa Rosa on that 1973 Hallowe'en, two teenage girls went to the hospital. One of them was in the same Roseland neighborhood where Michael lived and feared she was having a "bad trip" (hey, it was 1973). The other girl was in South Park and felt sick after eating wrapped taffy which doctors thought might have contained aspirin with codine.
Sonoma County Sheriff Don Striepeke told the Press Democrat "there's no doubt at this point that all three of these young people were drugged by candy from trick or treat bags" and advised all Hallowe'en candy given out in Santa Rosa be thrown away.
Deputies went door-to-door in the area where Michael made his rounds that night and contacted 150 residents, warning them about the tainted candy. Two people were given polygraph tests and nothing further was said about them. But no matter - Michael's story made him the perfect poster child for "Secret Witness"!
The rest of this article can be read at the SantaRosaHistory.com website. Because of recurring problems with the Blogger platform, I am no longer wasting my time formatting and posting complete articles here. I will continue to create stubs for the sake of continuity, but will be publishing full articles only at SantaRosaHistory.com.
- Jeff Elliott
It wasn't a courtroom; it was a theater stage, it was a circus ring, it was the geek tent at the carnival sideshow. It was the 1963 double murder trial of Iva Kroeger and since you couldn't attend in person, you eagerly soaked up every news report describing her daily antics.
Iva was captured by the FBI in September 1962 and the trial would not commence until the following January. She and husband Ralph would be put on trial together and they shared the same defense attorney, Emmet Hagerty of San Francisco.
After Iva had been in jail six weeks - and following Grand Jury indictments and attorney delays (including an effort to move proceedings to Santa Rosa per a theory the murders were committed here) - she pleaded innocent by reason of insanity and Ralph made a plea of simple innocence. The judge appointed three psychiatrists to interview her and a month later, all agreed she was sane at the time of the murders.
The trial potentially would have three phases. Should the jury find Ralph and Iva innocent, proceedings would be over. But if the verdict was guilty, the next phase would consider whether Iva was insane at the time of the murders. And if she was found sane, jurors would decide between the death penalty or another sentence. There were eight women and four men on the final jury.
In the interim before the trial there were several new developments. The Santa Rosa branch of Bank of America had already filed an attachment on the Santa Rosa Ave. motel and the San Francisco house for $5,000 plus attorney fees. She further had loans from Exchange Bank for $1,177 and a Bank of America branch in San Francisco for $3,100 - taken together, the equivalent to $92k today. Another lien on the property was made by John Mazurek of San Francisco, who had one of those Believe-it-or-Not! encounters with Iva the con artist. It seemed she answered his 1961 classified ad to sell a dining room set. Iva didn't pay Mazurek for the furniture, of course, but also borrowed $975 from him (!!) - I swear, that woman's powers of persuasion were supernatural. His lien was for $1275, covering the sale price of the dinette and the loan she didn't pay back.
Gentle Reader might recall from part one that a couple of months after Mildred Arneson's disappearance her family received a mysterious telegram and typewritten letter demanding all of them to "keep your nose out of my affairs." It was so out of character they had no question someone else had written them, but the Sonoma County sheriff's investigator only yawned. But when the department did bother to ask questions about the letter they discovered Iva had borrowed the typewriter from Inez, the Native American woman who lived in Santa Rosa and often acted as Iva's chauffeur. As for it being postmarked from Tijuana, Inez told them Iva was in San Diego at that time (probably attending Rosicrucian Fellowship meetings).
There was also pre-trial chatter about whether Mildred was killed in Santa Rosa or San Francisco, much of the speculation centered on a large steamer trunk that was at the motel. What happened to it? Was it the same trunk that would hold Mildred's body?
The rest of this article can be read at the SantaRosaHistory.com website. Because of recurring problems with the Blogger platform, I am no longer wasting my time formatting and posting complete articles here. I will continue to create stubs for the sake of continuity, but will be publishing full articles only at SantaRosaHistory.com.
- Jeff Elliott
Iva Kroeger was headed to Santa Rosa, she told a friend after she arrived back in the Bay Area in mid-August, 1962. "I'm tired."
She didn't make it, but what she intended to do here was unknown. Did she expect to resume managing the fleabag motel on Santa Rosa Avenue? Was she not aware the Sonoma County sheriff and the FBI were looking for her? Didn't she know the Press Democrat - and other Bay Area newspapers - were printing investigative stories linking her to the disappearance of the Arnesons?
Or maybe she wasn't planning to return to Santa Rosa at all; the context was asking the friend for money to buy bus tickets. Iva was a fluent liar and adept at making up tales to grub cash out of everyone who was unfortunate enough to cross her path.
But she was likely telling the truth about feeling tired. She had just finished a 7,000+ mile trek across the nation and back again via trains, Greyhound buses and lifts from strangers, with her two grandsons (ages three and four) in tow for the cross-country return journey.
This article is in two parts; it begins with the story of that wild trip which can be told thoroughly for the first time, thanks to modern resources such as Ancestry and the availability of many regional newspapers on newspapers.com. The final section describes the three weeks between the discovery of the bodies and her arrest, when many developed a maniac obsession over the case and imagined they were seeing Iva everywhere. Before we begin all that, Gentle Reader will surely find her pre-Santa Rosa backstory illuminating:
The deepest secret of Iva Kroeger was the lie she told about her origins. In Santa Rosa she claimed to have been born in Munich Germany and sometimes added she was Jewish. She spoke in broken English and cocked her head to one side when reading or listening to someone, as if she struggled to understand the language.
In truth, she was born Lucille Cecilia Hooper at Louisville, Kentucky in September, 1918, which made her 43 when she murdered the couple and became a fugitive six months later. She married in November 1934 at age sixteen; she lied on the marriage license and said she was 19. Her husband was nearly twice as old and they had two sons while she was still a teenager.
The rest of this article can be read at the SantaRosaHistory.com website. Because of recurring problems with the Blogger platform, I am no longer wasting my time formatting and posting complete articles here. I will continue to create stubs for the sake of continuity, but will be publishing full articles only at SantaRosaHistory.com.
- Jeff Elliott
"Are the police looking for me?" she asked her friend on the phone.
It was mid-June 1962, and the Sonoma County sheriff's office was indeed looking for her...sort of. An arrest warrant was issued even though they weren't sure of the woman's name (was it Eva Long or Iva Kroeger?) where she might be (she was last seen in a taxi headed for Cotati) or what she looked like (she had taken all known photos with her when she vanished).
The warrant was for an assault with a deadly weapon because she pulled a gun on a tradesman who was owed money, but there was a growing clamor for her to be investigated in the disappearance of Mildred and Jay Arneson. Six months had passed since they went missing and Eva/Iva was the prime suspect, having taken over the Arneson's motel business and peddled lies or contradictory stories about what she knew. Yet while the sheriff still believed the elderly couple would turn up someday, the family and their lawyer kept gathering evidence which convinced them the Arnesons were dead. All that (and more!) was covered in the first chapter, "MURDER MOTEL ON SANTA ROSA AVE."
When Eva fled Santa Rosa on May 23 she left her friend Mrs. Kelly in charge the motel. She had met the Kellys five years earlier in San Francisco, when their son was in Cub Scouts and Eva/Iva was the Den Mother. (Let's pause for a moment to digest that unexpected factoid.) When deputies arrived the next day to make an arrest Mrs. Kelly told them her friend was then known as Iva Kroeger - which was indeed her legal name. Unsure which was an alias, the Press Democrat and other papers took to calling her Mrs. Eva Long-Kroeger.
As mentioned previously, the search for the Arnesons didn't begin in earnest until the Press Democrat launched its investigative series on July 1. The paper found that after Iva left Santa Rosa she headed for the San Francisco home she shared with husband Ralph Kroeger. She stayed there with him for a day before taking off, supposedly returning to Santa Rosa.
The thread that weaved through each part of this story was Iva Kroeger's astonishing Svengali-like powers to get others to do her bidding even when it was against their own best interests, and Ralph was no exception - see sidebar.
The rest of this article can be read at the SantaRosaHistory.com website. Because of recurring problems with the Blogger platform, I am no longer wasting my time formatting and posting complete articles here. I will continue to create stubs for the sake of continuity, but will be publishing full articles only at SantaRosaHistory.com. - Jeff Elliott