troubled history. Instead of calling the
police, she phoned Cooley’s son in
Lancaster. But he was in Los Angeles
that day, and his wife Dorothy was
unable to reach him on the phone.
So at about 7 p.m. Dorothy Cooley
drove over to the ranch. Spade met her
at the door, greeting her with a vacant
stare. He seemed to be in a trance,
Dorothy told the officers, and his clothes
were spattered with blood.
She entered the house at his insistence,
but when Spade urged her to go into the
bedroom and look at Ella Mae “becauseSheriff Galyen reached Mojave soon
after daybreak. He interviewed Spade
Cooley and then went into a closed-door
session with his investigators. Meanwhile,
reporters from Bakersfield, Los Angeles
and Hollywood sped to the police
station. From their files, they knew that
the Cooleys had been having marital
trouble, and that Spade had recently
filed for divorce.
At an early-morning news conference
the sheriff announced that Spade Cooley
was being held on suspicion of murder.
Under questioning he said that despite
his divorce action he had still loved
his wife, and had been hoping for a
reconciliation. He admitted that he had
“slapped Ella Mae around a little” during
an argument that Monday evening.
He maintained, however, that he
merely slapped her with his open hand,
not hard enough to injure her. Later,
he added, she fell and cut herself while
taking a shower. It was only after that,
he insisted, that she lost consciousness.
He also claimed that on two recent
occasions, while they were driving
together near the ranch, Ella Mae had
tried to jump out of their moving car.
Once, he said, he managed to pull her
back by her hair.
John Cooley found it hard to believe
that his father could be a killer. “If dad
did a thing like that,” he told reporters,
“he must have been insane.”
I
n the first front-page stories the
newspapers handled the one-time
swing king with kid gloves. Although he
was being held on suspicion of murder,
the known facts seemed to indicate a
domestic brawl, a violent quarrel which
might be a case of manslaughter at the
most. In such circumstances, Spade
Cooley’s clumsy attempt at a cover-up
was understandable.
However, as the investigation
continued and more details became
known, the picture got blacker.
Interviewing key witnesses, the detectives
reconstructed the events preceding Ella
Mae’s death.
She had agreed to return to the ranch
to stay for a few days, while she and
her estranged husband discussed their
difficulties. Their two children – Melody,
14, and Donnell Jnr., 12 – were staying
with a family in nearby Rosamond,
where they went to school.
The detectives had identified the two
women who were at the ranch when
the ambulance arrived. One was Spade
Cooley’s Hollywood business manager;
Lilya McWhorter, Melody Cooley and Dorothy Cooley (wife of son John)
prepare to testify at courtThen Cooley turned on
his daughter Melody. “If
you say anything about
this,” he raged, “I’ll kill
you too!” At that point
Melody ran screaming
from the house, out to
Mrs. McWhorter’s car,
and gasped out her
horriic story
felt jittery and had taken a sleeping pill.
About 9 p.m., she told the
investigators, she asked him about his
wife, who had not come out to greet her.
Spade told her to go into the bedroom
and take a look at Ella Mae. She went in
and saw Mrs. Cooley stretched out on
the bed. Spade told her that Ella Mae
had fallen in the shower and hit her head
and she appeared to be unconscious.
Despite the bandleader’s assurance
that Ella Mae would be all right, his
business manager insisted on phoning
Dorothy Davis, who had taken carethe other was Dorothy Davis, a nurse
who lived in North Hollywood and was
an old friend of the Cooleys.
The business manager said that Spade
phoned her at 4 p.m. on Monday asking
her to join him at the ranch to discuss a
project. She arrived around 8 p.m., and
they spent an hour talking in the living-
room. Spade seemed distraught and
preoccupied, she recalled. He told her heof Mrs. Cooley professionally in the
past. The nurse drove up from North
Hollywood, arriving at the ranch about
11 p.m. She examined Mrs. Cooley and
said she was severely injured; dying – or
already dead. It was Dorothy Davis who
made the first call for the ambulance.T
he most damning witness was Spade
Cooley’s daughter Melody. Her
father phoned her at about 6 p.m. at
Rosamond, she said, and asked her to
come out to the ranch, 15 miles away.
Melody asked Mrs. McWhorter, with
whom she and her brother were staying,
to drive her to Willow Springs and wait
for her.
When she entered the ranch house,
Melody said, she found her mother lying
nude and unconscious in the shower.
While the horrified girl watched, Spade
dragged Ella Mae out and proceeded to
give her a savage beating.
Then he turned on his daughter. “If
you say anything about this,” he raged,
“I’ll kill you too!” At that point Melody
ran screaming from the house, out to
Mrs. McWhorter’s car, and gasped out
her horrific story.
Mrs. McWhorter knew of the couple’sInvestigators at the Cooley ranch