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<\/a>\nFull of remorse, Clarence McDonald went on a hunger strike inside his jail cell.<\/em><\/p>\n
McDonald was suddenly contrite, now that he had had time to think about the real reason he had decided to fire a .38-caliber slug into the side of pretty Dorothy Broz seconds after kissing her goodbye in a final gesture of love.<\/p>\n
McDonald, a handsome blond youth, and Broz, a schoolmate of McDonald’s at J. Stirling Morton Township High School in Cicero, had been dating off and on. Citing religious differences and a loss of interest, the pretty high schooler decided to call off the romance and abandoned any premature promises of marriage that she had made to McDonald.\u00a0 Bright and ambitious, Dorothy had turned her attention to college. She planned to attend either the University of Chicago or Steven’s Beauty College in the Loop.<\/p>\n
It was common knowledge in the hallways of Morton High that McDonald did not take kindly to the rebuff, and on one earlier occasion had\u00a0pointed an unloaded gun at Broz inside Lanke’s ice cream store in Cicero.\u00a0 In a fit of anger, he had also allegedly punched her in the face.\u00a0 And two weeks before the tragedy, McDonald had placed a $5 bet, wagering that Dorothy “would never graduate.”\u00a0 “Just kidding\u2014a joke, that’s all,” the youth said with a chuckle.<\/p>\n The murder weapon was stolen from the Great Western Railway freight yard where McDonald had been employed as a messenger during the previous Christmas holiday.<\/p>\n Apparently unconcerned about McDonald’s aberrant behavior toward her, the trusting girl made a date with him to attend a downtown matinee.\u00a0 They left the high school campus at 12:45 p.m., arriving in the Loop about a half-hour later. Dorothy and Clarence killed time until the next show by browsing for sweaters at the Carson Pirie Scott department store at State and Washington.\u00a0 They walked over to the Palace at two o’clock, just in time to catch the matinee-showing of\u00a0Hellzapoppin<\/em>‘, a rollicking, slapstick comedy starring Martha Raye and Olsen & Johnson, a nationally known vaudeville act.<\/p>\n As they sat together in the lower balcony in the midst of fifteen hundred other movie patrons, McDonald coolly cradled his loaded .38 inside his left suit pocket, waiting for the right moment.\u00a0 At 4:26, following a March of Time newsreel, the film noir crime picture\u00a0Sealed Lips<\/em>\u00a0rolled through the opening credits. Two minutes later, amid the clamor of an onscreen depiction of a prison riot, McDonald planted a firm kiss on Dorothy’s sealed lips and pressed the .38 into her left side.<\/p>\n The girl’s sudden scream was barely audible above the movie gunshots and mayhem.\u00a0 “My God! He’s got a gun!” Then a muffled shot, and the girl slumped over. McDonald composed himself and quietly retreated to the upper balcony where he blended in with the crowd. Lingering for just a moment, he then made a hasty retreat down the stairs and exited through an alley door before the audience could fully comprehend what had just happened. Eyewitnesses told police that they assumed it was a promotional stunt tied in with the whiz-bang shoot-’em-up antics in\u00a0Hellzapoppin’<\/em>.\u00a0 By the time the police arrive to seal off the exits, the killer had fled.<\/p>\n McDonald caught the Douglas line elevated train at Quincy and Wells (the antique train station still stands, a block west of the Rookery Building) and returned to\u00a0 his sister’s home.\u00a0 Feeling no guilt, or simply dazed by the awful knowledge of what he had done, the boy took in another double feature at the Olympic Theater in Cicero with a schoolmate companion before retiring.\u00a0 He concealed the murder weapon in the garage behind the house.<\/p>\n The expected knock on the door came at 3:45 the next morning after police had questioned girlfriends of the deceased.<\/p>\n Police learned from the accused’s sister that McDonald’s family life was in shambles.\u00a0 Clarence’s father hanged himself inside the Marquette District Police Station on September 3, 1936, after he was accused of raping his thirteen-year-old daughter, Phoebe. Police feared that Clarence would follow his father to the grave in a similar fashion following his arrest.\u00a0 “There’s nothing more to live for since Dottie’s dead,” he wailed after the tough Chicago detectives helped strip away his bravado.<\/p>\n Put on a twenty-four-hour suicide watch, McDonald was taken back to the Palace the next morning, where he was forced to reenact the shooting for the benefit of police, reporters, and the county coroner.\u00a0 That was standard police procedure in those days.\u00a0 Afterward, the boy gave a full confession to Captain Thomas Duffy in the interrogation room of the First District Police Station.\u00a0 He said that he had thought about “doing away” with Dorothy for three days before he actually worked up enough nerve to pull the trigger.<\/p>\n After the dead girls’ indignant uncle punched the killer in the face during the inquest, McDonald’s sister, Mrs. Robert Wagner, pleaded for sympathy and understanding.\u00a0 “He was full of hate and anger and it grew in him until he had to get it out some way. He was taunted by a relative who repeatedly told him, ‘Your father was insane and killed himself. Someday you will be insane too!'”<\/p>\n Jaded by one too many homicides, the Chicago press corps dubbed the teenager killer, “Kiss of Death” McDonald. Before the grand jury, the boy’s lawyer described his client as “a seventeen-year-old Penrod gone berserk.” (Penrod was the incorrigible boy created by Booth Tarkington.)<\/p>\n Penrod he wasn’t, but Clarence McDonald was obviously a troubled youth who was a puzzle to the psychiatrists who testified for both the defense and the State during the trial.<\/p>\n The jury convicted him of murder on May 22, 1942, setting the penalty for the crime at life in prison.\u00a0 Clarence McDonald served eighteen years of the original sentence at the Pontiac, Illinois, reformatory before receiving parole on March 17, 1961.<\/p>\n Culled from:\u00a0Return Again to the Scene of the Crime<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n LAPD ’53<\/a>\u00a0is a book by James Ellroy that combines 1953-era photographs from the Los Angeles Police Department archives with Ellroy’s own interpretations.<\/p>\n Here’s one of the amazing crime scenes, from December 15, 1953, which is labeled a “suicide” but I have my doubts.\u00a0 Below the photos is Ellroy’s interpretation.<\/p>\n<\/a>
\nPretty Dorothy Broz never made it to graduation day.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>
\nDetectives prepare to transport Dorothy Broz from the Palace Theater balcony to the county morgue.<\/em><\/p>\nUnusual Death Scene Du Jour!<\/h3>\n