she may be dead,” Dorothy refused and
left.
Dr. Robert Huntington, the county
pathologist, reported that Mrs. Cooley
had died from a severe beating. Her
aorta had been ruptured by a heavy blow
or kick in the abdomen. Her thyroid was
ruptured, possibly the result of choking,
and there were bruises and lacerations
all over her body. He estimated that she
had been dead for four to five hours
when she was brought into the hospital
- which placed her death between 7 and
8 p.m.
Spade’s bloodstained clothes were
found in a washing machine at the ranch
house. An attempt had been made to
clean up the place before the officers
arrived, but there were spots of blood in
the living-room, bedroom and bathroom.
O
n Tuesday afternoon, after further
interrogation at Mojave, Spade
Cooley was taken to the Kern County Jail
at Bakersfield and booked on suspicion
of murder. He still behaved like a sleep-
walker, and did not seem to realise what
was happening to him.
On Wednesday afternoon he appeared
to be still in a daze when he was
arraigned before Judge John Jelletich,
who ordered him held without bail for a
preliminary hearing.
As the investigation continued the
question of motive remained. In his
several statements Spade was unclear
as to what precipitated the quarrel
in which he admitted “slapping Ella
Mae around a little.” The nearest he
came to divulging a motive was when
he muttered that he suspected her of
“running around with other men.”
Close friends said that Cooley,
whose own Casanova activities had
threatened to break up his marriage in
the past, had been abnormally, almost
psychopathically, jealous of Ella Mae.
He constantly accused her of cheating
on him.
Spade himself was not saying
anything. He had a heart attack in his
cell and was taken to hospital. “He talks
about his wife as though she’s still alive,”
his lawyer Morris Chain told reporters.
“His mind can’t accept the facts. He
rejects them.”
Brooding in jail, the cowboy
musician whiled away the time
by composing a couple of songs.
One was a hymn. The other,
Cold Grey Bars, was taken up
immediately by a recording
company and rushed into disc
production. The lyrics included
the lines: “Cold grey bars for
windows, cold grey walls in view- Makes no difference, darling,
all I see is you.”
“I hope they cut these two
songs back-to-back on the disc,
like I’ve asked them to,” Cooley
said wistfully. “Cold Grey Bars is about
my wife, and any tune on the other side
but a hymn would be sacrilegious.”
On the eve of his trial he was
permitted to visit his ranch under guard,
to help fill in some of the blank spots in
his memory.
Tears welled in his eyes when he
found his lawns burned brown by the
sun, his flowers dead, his swimming pool
stagnant and his house locked against
him. “It’s all gone,” he mourned, “all
gone, dead, and over.”
No one had a key, and deputies had
to force an entry to the house, where
he broke down when he walked into
the living-room and saw the splintered
remains of two violins on the floor, silent
reminders of that night of violence.
“This brings back horrible memories,
he sobbed. “It’s a bitter, bitter thing. I’ve
grieved every moment I’ve been in that
cell. I’ve grieved for my wife and I long
to be with my children.”
W
hen his trial began, Spade Cooley,
his eyes puffy after a sleepless
night, wore a black business suit and tie,
a far cry from the gaudy attire he once
affected as King of Western Swing.
“This was murder in the first degree,”Dr. Huntington told the
court there were burns
on Ella Mae’s breasts,
apparently inlicted with
a cigarette. He said he
believed the burns were
inlicted after her death,
or a few minutes before,
describing tests he
had made on his own
forearm with a lighted
cigarette to determine
how long the blisters
would last
District Attorney Kit Nelson told the
jury. “It was a premeditated, deliberate
torture-killing. Murder by torture
carries a possible death penalty on
conviction, and that’s what we’re asking
for and that’s what we intend to prove.”
Dr. Huntington told the court there
were burns on Ella Mae’s breasts,
apparently inflicted with a cigarette. He
said he believed the burns were inflicted
after her death, or a few minutes before,
describing tests he had made on his
own forearm with a lighted cigarette to
determine how long the blisters would
last.
Defence Attorney Basil Lambros
asked Dr. Huntington whether the fatal
injuries could have been suffered in an
accidental fall in the shower.
“I find it inconceivable,” the
pathologist replied.
“Isn’t it true,” the defence attorney
asked, “that Mrs. Cooley could have
been unconscious while receiving most
of her injuries – and that if unconscious,The murder investigation
gave insights into
the troubled, violent
marriage of Ella Mae
and Spade (right) and its
savage conclusionCooley (far
right) is
arraigned in
court