Bad luck can follow some people around like the plague – constant, ever present, and with no cure. Some people have more than bad luck following them around. And others are harbingers of death. Louise Peete was certainly a harbinger of death. Wherever she went, someone would die.
Louise Peete was born Lofie Louise Preslar on September 20th, 1880 in Bienville, Louisiana. She was born into privilege and affluence. Peete’s father was a wealthy newspaper publisher, and her mother was a lady of status. Peete once told a newspaper reporter that she “came from cultured, educated people”.
However, all of that privilege, education, and affluence wasn’t inherited by Peete herself. She certainly had a mind of her own, and acted out a lot. At 15, she was expelled from her prestigious private school in New Orleans for stealing, and for engaging in ‘promiscuous behaviour’.
This didn’t stop Peete from wanting to live in the lap of luxury. She liked fashion, especially hats, and craved beautiful dresses and clothing. She also had an affinity for jewels and diamonds.
In 1903, Peete married Henry Bosley. He was a salesman, and not quite up to the luxurious standards that Peete craved. The marriage wouldn’t last long, though.
Henry caught his wife in bed with another man, and committed suicide. The first of many men who encountered Peete to do so.
With Henry’s insurance payout in her pocket, Peete moved to Shreveport, Lousiana where she worked as a high-end sex worker. However, the establishment that employed her soon let her go, as she would steal jewels and money from her wealthy clients.
At some point, Peete changed her name to ‘Louise M. Gould’. She went by this moniker whens he moved to Boston, Massachusetts in 1911.
Once there, she once again changed her story. She started claiming that she was an heiress from Dallas, Texas named R. H. Rosley. She claimed that she’d run away from home. She claimed that her family tried to confine her to a convent. Peete, as Rosley, claimed a lot of things.
Using the ruse, Peete endeared herself to the families of status in the Boston area. She even managed to lodge with one family, as they feared for her safety after they heard her sob story. Peete was living the life she’d always dreamed of. But it wasn’t enough.
Peete began stealing from the family, and from their friends. She also began charging luxurious items – clothes and jewelry – to the family’s account without their knowledge at various high-end boutiques and stores.
The family discovered the fraud and the theft, and also uncovered Peete’s true identity. Rather than suffer the humiliation of pressing charges, and being the focus of the gossip mongers, the family and the police allowed Peete to leave town, so long as she agreed never to return. Peete readily agreed.
After leaving Boston, Peete moved to Waco, Texas. Once there, she used her charm and her wit to begin romancing Joe Appel, a wealthy oil baron.
One week after their meeting, Joe was dead. He was found shot to death. Every diamond he had ever owned was missing from his home. The second man to meet his maker in the presence of Louise Peete.
Peete was the prime suspect, and was very quickly arrested for his murder. At trial, Peete sweet-talked her way out of murder charges. She used her charm and acting skills on the stand, regaling the grand jury with a tale of self-defence. She told them that she’d had to kill her lover because he tried to rape her. The grand jury acquitted her. No one seems to know what, exactly, happened to Joe’s diamons.
Having burned bridges in Waco, Peete moved to Dallas in 1913. There, she married a night clerk from the St. George Hotel, Harry Fuarote. Harry was smitten. Peete wanted access to what Harry had.
After the marriage, Peete set her sights on the hotel’s safe. She stole $20,000 worth of jewels. Police were alerted to the missing jewels immediately. Harry was cleared of any suspicion, but Peete was not. However, they never found evidence of her involvement, either. Just like Joe’s diamonds, the St. George Hotel’s jewels seemed to disappear.
Harry was left heartbroken. On top of his wife’s thieving, she was often caught in moments of infidelity. Full of despair, Harry committed suicide. The third man to die after being associated with Louise Peete.
Moving right along, Peete found herself in Denver, Colorado. There, she married Richard Peete, a salesman, in 1915. A year later, the couple had a daughter, Frances Ann, known as Betty.
The marriage was not a happy one. Peete and Richard fought all the time. In 1920, the couple separated. Peete decided she wanted bigger, better things. She moved to Los Angeles, California, and decided she wanted to make it big.
Once in LA, Peete made the acquaintance of Jacob C. Denton, a retired mining engineer who was exceedingly wealthy. He was also a widower, and had a teenage daughter. Peete couldn’t care less about the daughter, but the other two factors appealed to her greatly.
Peete needed a place to stay, and Jacob was renting. He wanted to spend some time with family in Arizona, and wanted to rent out his 14-room mansion long-term while he was away. His daughter had gone ahead of him, as he waited until the rental was all sorted.
He’d set the price at $350 a month. Somehow, Peete talked him down to $75 a month. Agreement put in place, Peete moved into the mansion on May 26th, 1920.
Prior to moving in, Peete had attempted to use her wit and charms on Jacob. She attempted to woo and seduce him, but he wasn’t buying it.
That didn’t stop Peete, though. After moving into the mansion, Peete told the housekeeper that she was Jacob’s live-in girlfriend. Whether she truly believed she was in a romantic relationship with Jacob is up for debate. Either way, she claimed she was, while Jacob continuously turned down her advances.
By June 2nd, 1920, no one had seen, nor heard, from Jacob in a week. It wasn’t long after that that the gardner was instructed by Peete to bring down a large load of dirt to the basement. She claimed she wanted to start growing mushrooms.
On June 5th, 1920, Peete withdrew $300 from Jacob’s bank account, and gained access to his safe deposit box. But something seemed off. A bank official noticed that the signature on the cheque seemed odd. It didn’t look like Jacob’s at all. Peete had an answer for that.
Peete claimed that she’d had to help Jacob sign the cheque with his left hand – his non-dominant hand. Jacob had lost his right arm, you see. He’d gotten into an altercation with a ‘mysterious woman’, and had injured his arm severely. (In other stories, it was both his arm, and his leg.) As a result, he’d had his arm amputated. He was so ashamed, he’d decided to live in seclusion, with Peete as his go-between.
Somehow, this story seemed perfectly logical to the bank, and Peete was allowed access to Jacob’s accounts.
Peete now had free reign to do what she pleased with Jacob Denton’s name, and money.
She began referring to herself as his wife, demanding that others call her Mrs. Denton. She threw parties in his mansion. She bought expensive clothes and jewels. She drove his Cadillac. She pawned the things from the mansion she didn’t like. She rented rooms to people and pocketed the rent money. She even convinced the renters from a property in Arizona to write their rent cheques out to her – as Jacob’s ‘wife’.
If anyone asked where Jacob was, she would claim that he was on an extended business trip. No one seemed to notice that this was not the story she’d told originally.
Louise Peete was finally living the high life, and she wouldn’t be stopped.
In August of 1920, four months after Jacob’s disappearance, his daughter grew suspicious. She hadn’t heard from her father, and Peete wasn’t forthcoming. Jacob’s daughter hired an attorney to help her find out what happened to her father.
The attorney knew that Peete had something to do with Jacob’s disappearance. Peete claimed to have no knowledge of his whereabout, but agreed to forward any documents pertaining to his businesses and finances to the attorney as soon as possible.
Before she could complete her end of the bargain, Peete found renters for the mansion – whom she instructed to make payments out to her – and fled to Denver. Back in Denver, Peete ‘reconciled’ with her husband. Poor Richard had no knowledge of what his wife had gotten up to in LA.
On September 23rd, 1920, Jacob’s daughter and the attorney they hired went ahead with a search of the mansion – the new tenants were incredibly cooperative. With the assistance of a private detective, hired by the attorney, the search party trekked to the basement.
There, they found Jacob Denton’s decomposing body. He’d been buried in dirt in a ‘wooden cubicle under the stairs’. He was missing a diamond ring from his finger – a ring that he was always known to wear.
The police were alerted, and an investigation quickly ensued. Louise Peete was, again, the primary suspect.
Before Louise Peete had been tracked down, a friend of hers came forward with information.
She told them that Peete had left items at her house before returning to Denver. The items included a can, a couple of watches, bank books, and various personal papers belonging to Jacob. The friend also had a slip from a pawn shop for a man’s diamond ring.
The friend said that Peete had approached her and asked her to pawn the ring for her, and to give her the money, so that she could return to Denver. The description on the pawn slip matched the description of Jacob’s missing ring.
Once police tracked Peete down in Denver, she was questioned. She maintained her innocence, claiming that she was not involved, and told them the story of the ‘mysterious woman’ that she’d originally told employees at the bank – missing arm and all.
Peete’s story instantly fell apart as Jacob had been found with both of his arms. But Peete had an answer for that, too. She said that the body wasn’t that of Jacob – it must be someone else who’d been killed without her knowledge.
Somehow, the police didn’t buy that story any more than they’d bought the story of the ‘mysterious woman’. Louise Peete was brought back to LA, and was charged with first-degree murder.
Lousie Peete’s trial began on January 21st, 1921, and was heavily sensationalized in nationwide newspapers.
However, Peete loved the attention. She had to be warned repeatedly by her defense attorney not to ‘overtalk’. She liked the sound of her own voice so much, she tended to forget to keep her own stories straight. Which was quite advantageous to the prosecuting attorney.
Despite the fact that Jacob’s cause of death had been determined to be a bullet to the head, and that the gun had been found in the closet of the room Peete had been using, she continued to maintain her innocence. She was convinced that she could use her charm to talk her way out of a murder charge. She’d done it before, she could do I again.
It didn’t work. On February 17th, 1921, a jury found Louise Peete guilty of first degree murder. She was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Richard Peete stayed by his wife’s side throughout the ordeal. He was loyal, and vowed to remain loyal. He truly believed that his wife was incapable of the atrocities she’d been accused of.
In 1923, Peete told Richard to divorce her. He granted her wish. Richard would do anything she asked.
By 1924, after the divorce was finalized, Peete stopped answering Richard’s letters, and refused to see him when he came to visit. Richard was devasted. He committed suicide in an Arizona hotel room.
Peete had had three husband commit suicide, and had murdered a man who refused her romantic overtures. Wherever Louise Peete went, death followed like a dark shadow. And so it would continue, nearly 20 years after her incarceration.
Stay tuned for part two.
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Sources:
The Life and Lies of L.A. Man Killer Louise Peete – Joan Renner – LA Magazine
Louise the Lady Killer – Mark Bribben – The Malefactor’s Register
Hollywood Crime Scene podcast – Episode 92 – Louise Peete
Louise Peete Wikipedia page
[…] In 1924, Louise Peete was incarcerated for murder. Three of her husbands had committed suicide, she was acquitted of the murder of Joe Appel, and convicted of the murder of Jacob C. Denton, a wealthy man living in Los Angeles, California. Death followed Peete wherever she went. And she was supposed to serve a life sentence for one such death. Part one can be found here. […]