Morbid - The Los Feliz Murder House

Episode Date: March 29, 2021

It's a DO-OVER! This tale has always been such a crazy one that we just had to do it again and do it right.  On December 6, 1959, respected and renowned doctor, Harold Perelson, turned his family's dream home into a nightmare when he snapped in the dead of night and left a trail of blood in his wake. This house would come to be known as the Los Feliz Murder House for a good reason. Some interesting links: Dr. Perelson's Published Paper Article Movie Will Be Based On By Jeff Maysh https://the-line-up.com/los-feliz-murder-house https://strangeremains.com/2019/12/26/the-sinister-story-of-las-murder-mansion/ As always, thank you to our lovely sponsors! Canva Design like a pro with Canva Pro! Right now, you can get a FREE 45-day extended trial when you use my promo code! Just go to Canva.me/morbid to get your FREE 45-day extended trial. Embark Right now, Embark has an offer on their Breed and Health Kit for our listeners! Go to Embarkvet.com now to get free shipping and save $40 off your Embark Breed and Health Kit with Promo code Morbid. Purple Purple really is comfort for an uncomfortable world. Right now, you’ll get 10% off any order of $200 or more! Go to Purple.com/morbid10 and use promo code morbid10. Terms apply. ThredUp Get the styles you love at a fraction of the price. You’ll look and feel good with thredUP! And for Morbid listeners, here’s an exclusive offer just for you: Get an extra 30% off your first order at thredUP.com/MORBID. Terms apply. HelloFresh Go to HelloFresh.com/10morbid and use code 10morbid for 10 free meals, including free shipping! Cowritten by Alaina Urquhart, Ash Kelley & Dave White (Since 10/2022)Produced & Edited by Mikie Sirois (Since 2023)Research by Dave White (Since 10/2022), Alaina Urquhart & Ash KelleyListener Correspondence & Collaboration by Debra LallyListener Tale Video Edited by Aidan McElman (Since 6/2025) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey, weirdos, I'm Elena. I'm Ash. And this is morbid with Ashes cats. I don't know if you just heard Lux playing with the water in his water bowl. Franklin looks like he's about to pounce on Lux. So this should be interesting. This could be a time. But this is another throwback episode.

It's going to be, I like to say it each time, just in case anybody's like hopping in on this episode, that we are taking some of the super older episodes, the ones that don't sound that great audio-wise. I was literally like, glub, glub, glub, glub. Glob, glub, glub. Under the water. Or the ones that, you know, in the beginning, we were just getting our feet wet.

We didn't really know the format. We really wanted to stick to. We didn't know how to tell a story cohesively that well. And so, and, you know, our research, I think, has gotten more, like, varied and, you know, we've just gotten better at organizing all of it. So I would like to, Obviously, some of those older episodes are like gems and you just got to leave them how they are.

Oh, hell yeah. Even if they sound like we're underwater. But a couple of them I was like, yeah, I'm just not happy with that one. So I would look into a couple of the other cases. There were my episodes that I was looking at. And I looked into some of the old cases some more and I found some extra information that I hadn't found my first go around. So I felt like I could add more. Boom.

And that's why we're redoing a couple of these episodes. And today's is going to be the loss. The loss. Loss. Today's going to be the Loss. Today's going to be the Loss Felice murder house. Redue. Revamp.

Redue part due. And here's our announcement that we bought it and we're living there now. Woo! No, we are not. Totally kidding. But yeah, but things have happened since that episode aired and there's been some, I went a little further into a couple of things that I thought were important. And I just think I can better narrate this episode.

tell you the story a little better. So let's get it. Let's do this. So this, if anybody has heard of this, it is a straight up mystery in a lot of ways. It's not a who done it. We know who done it. We do. We just don't know why done it. Why you done it? Why done it? There is not really concrete motive. There's a little bit of like, okay, I guess we can point to that. Right. But it's bonkers and weird. Yeah. Now, this is the tale of a murder-suicide that even though it was absolutely horrific, it could have turned out even worse, and luckily it didn't. Yeah. So this crime scene is 2475 Glendower Place, and it's in the Los Angeles area. Perfect. In case you're out there, that's where it is. You probably know. It's a beautiful mansion. It's really beautiful. It's gorgeous.

It was originally built in 1925. It was designed for Harry F. Schumacher. It's 5,000 square feet. That's a lot of footts. It was created in Spanish Revival style. So it's like that white stucco with that like clay tile type roof and like terracotta bits and pieces. It has small balconies on it. It's just like that kind of style.

It's really pretty. Here for it. Yeah. It's truly impressive. He, so Harry Schumacher lived in the home until he passed. He passed away in 1932. Weirdly, he passed away December 6th, 1932, which as we will see, this date will eventually become the date of the tragedy that we are going to be speaking about today. Isn't that so weird?

Yeah. Just like a weird. It's of all, like 365 days in a year. Like, is that coincidental? Just very weird. Do we think? I don't know. I don't know.

So after Harry Schumacher died in 1932, it was sold to Frederick Zelnick. This guy was a well-known producer and director. He was from Germany. He specialized in silent film. So this place got like the Hollywood. You know what I mean? Like the producer, the director living in it. And it's still to this day, it's obviously like a Hollywood mainstay. Like people who know this know where it is. It's like an iconic house. Not for good things. No. Unfortunately. Unfortunately. No. Isn't it on like one of those tours? Like the, what do they call them? I think it was. It was on like the, I don't, I'm probably. I'm probably. going to say the wrong one, but like the dearly departed toward like those kind of things. Yeah. But obviously it's a mansion and several influential and well-to-do people have lived in it so far. So we know it's an impressive home. So it has one of those entryways that really like set

the tone for the whole house, in my opinion. It's like completely tiled. It just like opens up to kind of just reveal this this beautiful home in front of you. There's a conservatory. in the house? What? Yeah, a conservatory.

I was like, yep, that's when you know you've made it. Yeah, when you are chilling in your conservatory, you're like, well, I've made it. Yeah, or when you have what they had, a special breakfast room. What? Which I... Not like a dining room. I love breakfast, so I'm on board with this. I'm on board with that too, because could you eat your breakfast for dinner in the

breakfast room? Do you think that's apropos? I assume you could. Yeah, I think it's just for breakfast food. Okay. This room is down for some pancakes. Yeah, it's only, I feel like it's like Ron Swanson-esque. And like in his office, how he just has like a framed photo of like bacon and eggs.

I feel like that's what this. I just want a breakfast room. It also had staff quarters, of course. Love it. And a ballroom in this house. Now, the people who lived there before did have staff. Like this house was fully staffed. But when the people who were going to talk about moved in, they actually didn't have staff.

So the staff quarters just kind of turned into like. like a guest room. All right. But there's also a ballroom, so there's that. And the ballroom is 20 feet by 36 feet and has a bar in it like an actual banquet hall. Hell yeah. Yeah. Like rent it out for your wedding. It's so much. Now, it was Harold Perilsen and his wife Lillian who bought the house sometime in the 1950s. I looked everywhere and cannot find the actual date that they purchased this house. Nowhere. That's weird. Just 1950s. That's all you know. What if it was December 6th? What if it was? That'd be wild.

It could be. Maybe that's why it's not listed. Maybe. They don't want to like continue that. Yeah. Put it out there. Come on. Because then it would be like six, six, six.

Oh, so maybe the mark of the beast. Okay. So let's talk about, let's talk about Harold and Lillian before we talk about what happened in the home. Yes. Shall we? So it's called the Los Felice murder house. So I'm sure you can imagine where this is all going to go. Disneyland.

Exactly. So Harold Perilsen was born February 1st, 1909, and he was born in Queens, New York. So way on the East Coast, away from the home he would later purchase and make infamous. A New Yorka. Yeah, in New Yorka. He had three siblings and was the oldest. His parents, Henry and Molly, were both immigrants to America. And they were here to give their family a chance at the American Dream. Oh. And they were really going for it. Good. They were really hard workers. His father was from Poland. His mother was rough. And they taught Harold to be a hard worker too. So they really instilled this like, you can achieve anything. We're in America in him. And he did.

Okay. He like really went for it. He decided really young that he wanted to attend medical school. Wow. He was like, I want to be a doctor. And he worked his ass off to achieve that dream. After all, again, he had parents who were like, you can do it. Right.

So when you have that backing, it's like, woo. Let's get it. So tell your kids, they can do anything, everybody, but not what Harold did. Do anything except murder kids. Do everything up until like 1950s. So he was super brilliant. They always get the big brains, it feels like these guys, unfortunately. So off to medical school he went.

It appears he went to school partially in New York. I don't know exactly where he got to his degree from. Because again, it's really hard to find anything about them. That's weird. But we do know that after New York and medical school, he took his big brain out to California to really try to like hit it big. All right. Success.

So soon after medical school, he actually married Lillian Silver, who had moved to California from Ohio. All right. Yeah. So his first job straight out of the gate in California was working at a doctor's office in Englewood. He soon rose up the ranks. He proved that he was a very brilliant and capable doctor.

He mainly focused and excelled in neurology and did a bit of research. He published a ton of papers in the field. He was really well known, like he was really getting a name for himself. He did keynote speaking at medical conferences, like, around the country. Oh, wow. Yeah, it's crazy. In fact, in June 1949, there appeared in one of the most well-known and respected papers in the field of, in his field of study, his name was on that paper. Oh, wow.

The authors. That's a big honor. Yeah, it was published in the American Heart Journal, and it was titled The Electrocardiogram and Familiar periodic paralysis. And you can still find this paper in like PubMed or like Science Direct, like all the other places that you obviously look for scientific research papers. I was just on there this morning. Yeah. I was going to say, you know. You're like, you know, like science.com, school.com. Scholastics is me. A lot of those places like you have to like have a login or something like there or like an account to get like the whole research paper. Yeah, I know.

I have a login. Yeah, you know. But it was published with his co-author. being Dr. Richard S. Cosby. So it was him and this other guy. Love it. Now, from that paper, just so you have an idea of what it was about, because I'm sure you're like, I just got to know. Oh, I know all about neuroscience. It says familial periodic paralysis is a rare disease, which was described by Cavari in 1853. The disease is characterized by recurrent attacks of quadriplegia, which often occur at night and are associated with a low-level of serum potassium. The administration of potassium salts hastens recovery from the attack. The clinical aspect of the case is to be reported from the material of a separate communication.

It is our purpose here to report the electrocardiographic findings in two cases of familial periodic paralysis, to discuss their diagnostic value, and to consider the significance of high and low levels of serum potassium in certain abnormal clinical states. So that's what the purpose of the paper was. What I got out of that was eat a couple bananas, but not too many. That's what I got out of that. That's what the, you know, funny enough, the conclusion of that paper is that exactly. So I know you have an account.

In conclusion. Yeah, you definitely got it. One banana is great. Two, have at it. Three, no. No, no, no. So because of all his knowledge and success, he soon got a job as a professor and assistant head of cardiology for the school of medicine at USC.

Casual. So dude is like really getting up there. When he wasn't teaching burgeoning young surgeons and doctors, he was working, he himself at Los Angeles County General, Cedars of Lebanon Hospital, and the Santa Fe Hospital of Los Angeles on the cardiology surgical teams. When did he sleep, though? I don't think he did. Maybe that's the problem.

He definitely didn't. Now, you can probably guess he was seeing a little bit of cash flow at this point. Just a smidge. Yeah, from all this work and success. Good. By this point, Lillian and Harold also had three children. They had Judy, Debbie, and Joel. Judith Rachel Perilsson was born July 31st, 1941.

Joel David Perilsen was born April 7th, 1946. And Deborah Lynn Perilsen was born February 16th, 1948. And it was at this time that they were like, we need to find our castle. Yes, our kingdom. Let's do this. after all, I mean, at this point, he's like, I've earned it. You also have three kids, so like, let's get a castle.

You need a lot of space. Right. They looked at several homes and immediately they fell in love with a Spanish revival mansion that they saw on a hill in Los Felice. Oh, I think I've heard of it. I think you have. I think I know that one. They bought this home for $60,000. Are you fucking kidding me?

Which today is apparently around half a million dollars. Wow. Yeah. So, yeah. So, yeah, that was like, imagine. I know. When we think... I'm, like, doing, like, a lot of math in my head right now.

Well, we think about, like, you know, when you think about the inflation and everything, it's easy to be like, what? I know. Yeah. But it's, like, back then, that was a shit ton of money. Yeah, it's hard to like... I mean, it's still a shit ton of money. It is for, like, for a mansion.

Yeah. It's like, like, yes, I want that. Yeah. Uh, Harold was definitely branching out, too, with his knowledge. And he soon became known in the field of cardiology and neurology as a prominent doctor and also as an injection specialist. Oh, okay. I also heard he was very interested in understanding how and why headaches occur. And like, to be honest, me too. Same. Like, I'm, I'm there. Isn't it just built up pressure in your head? I mean, there's many different things that cause headaches. But yeah, he was, like,

very into that. So he was always looking for ways to make injections smoother, less wasteful, you know, with like anesthesia and also for injecting, like, drugs for like pain medicine and stuff. he didn't want it to be wasteful anymore because like when you inject something you are losing a little bit of it at you know when you do it a little bit falls out so and he wanted to make it less invasive to the patient he was just looking to like reinvent the syringe it's weird because he sounds like a really good right you would think up until here well so he invented something for this purpose uh the invention was for an attachment that would go on to a hypodermic syringe and this attachment was something that was supposed to inject the fluid directly from a sealed glass capsule into the intended destination.

Now, eliminating a middle step also reduced possible contamination along the way or waste by spilling some of the fluid out before it actually entered the body. On December 30th, 1938, a lot of December, he had filed a patent for it. So it took years and years of fiddling with it. But when he was comfortable with it finally, in 1949, he needed someone else to like, back this thing. Right. You always need help with that and help to turn it into like a reality in the medical field. So he entered into a verbal agreement with a man named Edward Shusack. Already a verbal agreement. You're like, uh-oh. Yeah, a verbal agreement for anything is not good. It's never,

it's never real concrete. No. So their verbal agreement included an acknowledgement that they would split any profits 50-50. I'm sure you're seeing where this is going. When that's verbal, you want to get that in writing. Yeah. So Harold and Lillian actually sunk $24,496 into this project, which is a lot of money. Certainly is. And 7,000 of that actually came from Lillian's personal savings. Oh, wow. Because they really believed in this. Like, he knew shit. He wanted to like, he was passionate about it. So you want to help your mans. You want to help your man's. So unfortunately, Edward Shoe Stack, which wasn't even his real name, was a con artist. I was going to say Shoe Stack. And he was a. poop face. A poop face. He was a real poop face, one might say. He conned the doctor and after

11 more years of development, he ran away with the investment with like all of it, like any profits. All, like, yeah, he just didn't give him anything. 11 years. Didn't give him anything. Didn't give him any of his money back. Nothing just ran away with it. Wow. Yeah. What a shit stain. Now there was a court document filed on July, 1st, 1952, and Harold claimed that shoe stack, and, you know, whatever, using his fake name of shoe stack, just ran away with all the rights to the device. And he said that it was a shady corporation, quote, masked the deception of fraud. And the court was like, cool, cool, cool.

And they were like, yeah, we can't really do a whole lot to help you here. Because obviously he's pissed. He wants money from these courts. Because he just sunk a lot of money into this. That's a lot of money. And especially back then, he just bought a new house. He's hard up now because he's like, way to check it. So they told the courts of this.

They filed the document. The courts were like, yeah, you can totally sue him for this. So they sued. They sued the asshole. And he wanted $100,000 in damages and lost profits, which is pretty fair. I was just going to say. And after two years of just legal bullshit, because you know how this goes, tons of money was sunk into the court.

thing. You spend so much money fighting. Tons of it was sunk into this lawsuit. The court only ended up giving them $23,956. And at that point, that's like... And at that point, that's less than what they actually sunk into the invention in the first place. And then it's also, that's way less than what they've put in to court fees. Yeah, like they're in like lawyers and all that stuff. So that sucks. So this is, you know, not a great start. It's not a great, that's not a good blip. in your career. That's not good for your family. That's not good for your finances. It's not good when you like just bought a mansion to go through something like that. To lose a shit ton of money on something that you care about too, which sucks.

Well, it's something that came from your mind. That would be really difficult to get through. Intellectual property. Yeah. That sucks. Yeah, IP. So there is a, so like around this time, you know, things are a little strained in the house. Yeah. But they're on the website medium, This writer, Jeff Mesh, which I'll mention him at the end, too, because there's something interesting here. They're going to be doing like a movie. And it's like kind of, yeah, and he has something to do with it. He, he wrote a really good write up on this whole story. And he interviewed a woman who is now a dentist, whose name is Sherry Lewis, not the Sherry Lewis who invented lamb chops play along and is a ventriloquist.

Different cherry. Because this is Sherry and that's Sherry. But what I first saw it, I was like, is Sherry Lewis? She'd be doing a lot. But Sherry Lewis was 14 at the time when all this was going on. And she had grown up living near, I think it was across the street from the Perilsons. And she was actually their babysitter at the time. I remember that. Yeah. And so she said, quote, that her dad, she said, quote, my dad was kind of a playboy. And she said, she loved Lillian's cooking. Okay.

And she kind of eludes to the idea of like, an affair. Maybe something was going on. Yeah. But like she didn't know. Yeah. Well, she was like a kid. And it was the 1950s. So it's like, what's happening?

Top secret. What's happening over there? I kind of love that. Well, I don't love affairs. But it's like, it's spicy. Yeah. So she said, quote, she was sweet, Lillian. She made tomato soup with hot dogs cut up in it.

That sounds fucking foul. My dad thought that was wonderful gourmet cooking. and my mother, who was actually a gourmet cook, rather poo-poohed that. I would poo-poo the shit out of that. And then she said that she thought her father and Lillian were actually better suited for each other than her mother and Harold were suited for each other. Oh, that's funny. They should have done a wife swap.

So you wonder. That's weird. Yeah, she actually said they seemed like they should have had, like, different partners. That's kind of funny. And when the, so during this interview, she was asked if, like, she saw anything weird or if she saw like any violence happening in that house and she said no and she said quote there wasn't anything strange or bizarre Harold was quite a mild-mannered man and then she said he was very gentle and then she ended it by saying he gave good injections that's which I was like I'm sure there's

nothing salacious about that but like it just sounds like it just sounds very like nefarious you know what it sounds like it sounds like a euphemism it certainly does but like I was like wow, okay, that's just an interesting little tidbit. Yeah. But he was well known for being a great injection specialist. Like he was known for being able to be a gentle. We could have really used him today. We could have.

There you go. So a few years after this on November 3rd, 1957, their bad luck just kept on trucking through. Oh, no. Especially financially, emotionally. I wonder if the property is like a bad luck kind of property. Like, is this home something going on there? Yeah, is it like haunted a bit? Well, on this day, Judy ended up getting into a car accident in Vermont.

She was the oldest. Yeah. She was driving her younger siblings in the car with her and was behind the wheel of Harold's 52 Oldsmobile. Okay. Now, she went into an intersection and there's conflicting stories about who was at fault here and ended up hitting another car driven by Eleanor Keller. Now Keller, of course, said it was Judy's fault and that she said she just blew through that red light carelessly. All the kids in the car were injured with Judy receiving cuts and bruises to her hands and knees as well as a concussion.

Oh, dang. Joel had a head injury and, quote, severe shock to the nervous system. Oh. And Deborah had her cheeks sliced open in the cut. So, yeah. But Dr. Perilsen was like, nope, like that wasn't Judy's fault. I know it. Oh, wow.

way more, she's way more careful than that and she loves her siblings. She would never drive them into an intersection without thinking. So she, he sued, the family sued Keller, saying she was actually the negligent one that caused the accident. He wanted $20,000 for Judy's injuries and he wanted $10,000 for Jules. Not sure why Deborah's cheek was like chopped liver, but they just ignored that. He was like, her cheek killed nicely. Yeah, maybe they were just going with that they knew they could get.

I don't know. unfortunately even though he did win the case they did find it with her at fault oh wow they only gave him enough to cover medical bills and nothing more well that's the you're not really gonna he just sunk money into another lawsuit that yeah he won but he's winning these laws he's he's successful in winning lawsuits he's just not getting anything that's a thing sinking more money into them so it's just no good So even though they are starting to now deal with all these financial strains that are coming upon them, they still love to spend their money. And they still love to live that lavish life.

See, once you grow accustomed to it, it's hard to not. You know, they had nice cars. They, you know, were always buying things for the home, which, like, who's to judge that? But it just is, like, it didn't really end up that, like, helping them out at all. Like Judy got like a brand new sports car when she turned after she got in like a massive car accident and people who came to the home said like you know some of the neighbors kids that like would play with them said that they always saw like Judy's room always had like a wall of shoeboxes. Oh my God, I love that. Judy, his sister goals. In fact, they did find a note written by Judy to her aunt and I believe it was when she was around 18 years old and she had talked about like alluded to financially.

issues being a thing. She wrote, On the merry go round again. Same problems, same worries, only tenfold. Uh-oh. My parents, so to speak, are in a bind financially. And then she said something about, which is sad, she said something about wanting to get a job to help them out, help the family out. And she did. She got a job at a, um. She was like an usherette at a movie theater. Oh, cool. Yeah. Well, I mean, at least she appreciated what she had. She did. No, she does not seem like, you know. Like a spoiled rich kid. Yeah, she just got, I mean, she got, she lived a life of privilege and yeah. That's not her fault. She just was, you know, and she, she seems like she really. Yeah. Like, she seems like she was like, okay, they seem to be struggling. The only thing I know how to do right now is like, I'll get a job and try to help, which like, good for her. Good for her. Good job, Judy. This is when people started to notice, though, that Harold's was, his demeanor was changing. Yeah.

He was getting more focused on just making money and not so much on research or on his, like, thirst for knowledge that he once had. He was also reading, like, books that people said were very dark and depressive. Like, he said he just started, like, kind of just going, like, retreating into himself. Yeah. And they said he never seemed happy anymore. And he was always a very, like, gentle, like, they said, mild manner. Right.

Like, he was always just, like, there and happy and whatever, just doing his thing, taking care of his family. Now he was seeming like he was getting darker and darker. Oh, no. Yeah. So, and what we'll find out later is that things were a lot darker than people knew with him. So December 6, 1959, does that sound familiar? It does. This was the day. So around 5.30 p.m., Harold came home from work at the hospital. He hung out with his wife while she wrapped Christmas gifts. They were Jewish, but they had recently began to celebrate Christmas with friends and family as well. And they all had a delicious dinner, a home-cooked meal by Lillian. They all sat at the table that evening. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Everybody just chatted. Herald, by all accounts, didn't seem like he was particularly

off that night or anything like that. When dinner was done, they all cleaned up. And then the whole family went and watched some TV together in the living room. Pretty normal night. Yeah. So, Lilian and Harold took Debbie, who was 11 at the time, and Joel, who was 13 into bed after they watched their shows and said goodnight. Then they went and said goodnight to Judy, who was 18 at the time. She went to her room to do some homework, and then she was going to head to bed. So Lilian went into her bedroom, and she just read a book in bed. After reading for some time, she went to sleep. This entire time, Harold was downstairs alone, just watching television. And he didn't return upstairs until after Lillian was asleep. Okay. Now Harold went upstairs. He sat up in bed for a little

while himself reading Dante's Divine Comedy. In case you don't know, Dante's Divine Comedy is a poetry book divided into three sections. It's Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. It sounds super light-hearted. It tells the story of traveling through hell, purgatory, and paradise. It's weirdly significant when you know what he is about to do after reading this. He even underlined, like, certain passages after reading for a while, he went to sleep. That's when you know. Yeah. It wasn't until around 5 a.m.

So he went to sleep. Full grim cycle and everything. Everyone's asleep. Everyone's having a full night sleep. Around 5 a.m., he just wakes out of a dead sleep. Went downstairs into his toolkit, takes out a ball peen hammer. He then walks back into his bedroom with it. and suddenly walks up behind Lillian, who's fast asleep in bed, and strikes her in the back of the head with the ball peen hammer.

Wow. Out of nowhere. Ouch. The coroners confirmed that she had not, well, she had not died immediately because she actually, the whites of her eyes were blood red, they said. That's how much blood there was. She had been left to asphyxiate on her own blood from being hit. But they said she didn't scream because she was asphyxating on her own blood. I was going to say because she couldn't.

So no one in the house heard. It was just. Oh, my God. It was quiet. That's a nightmare. So he then casually walks into Judy's room, his oldest child. And he just walks up to her sleeping in bed and does the exact same thing. He slams the ball peen hammer into the back of her head.

What a, like. Yeah. The problem, well, for him, was that he was slightly off with that strike. Uh-huh. And though he did hit her with it, he got her in the back of the head. It wasn't as bad as he had hit if he had hit with a well-aimed strike. Right. So she woke up and started screaming.

Oh, no. Because that was it. She probably thinks that it's like an attacker. You wouldn't even know what was happening. You just feel pain. Yeah. So neighbors heard this screaming. That's how loud she was screaming.

And yet they heard her yelling, don't kill me. And Harold just repeatedly told her to, quote, lay still and keep quiet. Stop. Yeah. Yeah. Like your father is being like, lay still. Keep quiet.

While I kill you. While I beat you with a ball peen hammer. Like while I beat your head in. Yeah. What? Now that's the babysitter, Sherry Lewis. She said that she remembers hearing the screams. She woke out of a sound sleep.

I remember reading the article. Yes. And she said she had a friend Shelley over for a sleepover. Yeah. And they both heard it. And she said, quote, at first it sounded like a wild animal screaming. And then she said that she knew it was a person when she could hear Judy saying, don't kill me. My gosh.

Yes. And she's like pretty young too, right? She was 14 at the time. Yeah. So that's like a child. Yeah. Now during this chaotic massacre that he is trying to achieve, the other two kids have woken up.

Yeah, because there's like screaming throughout the house. She's screaming, don't kill me. Yeah. So they're like, hey, who's in? the house. And remember, they're 11 and 13. Right. So they're very aware, but they're also like children. They hear Judy screaming and of course they come out of sleep and wander, wander into the area. Yeah. Like what is happening. You're following the screams. He just looks at them. Like Harold just looks down at them and they're like panicking and he says, go back to bed. This is a nightmare.

Yeah, it is a nightmare. He's not wrong. Uh-uh. He's not wrong. But oh my God. That makes it more nightmareish. And he just calmly, this is a night. This is a nightmare. Go back to bed. He then led them both back to their rooms. Stop. So after he had led them back to bed, which by the way, he is soaked with blood, like dripping it onto the floor. Ew. And getting it all over everything as he does this. And he's just calmly leading them back to bed. Right. Like they're very aware of what's going on. Fully. 11 and 13. And then he just walks back into the hallway towards his bedroom again. And they're both terrified, obviously, because of all of this. So they waited for him to get out of sight and then they ran down the stairs as well.

Yeah. But they're children and they're terrified. So they made it to the entryway and are just standing there together like, what do we do? They just don't know where to go. Well, then when they get down to the entryway, they come face to face with a neighbor who is at the door now, a guy named Marshall Ross, who was running up the front steps to the front door. Because he heard the screaming. So now what it happened to get the neighbor's attention was that while he led them back to their rooms, Judy escaped. Judy, you bad bitch. She ran out of the house.

She ran out of the fucking door of her bedroom, ran straight to her parents' bedroom, probably to get her mother and get the fuck out of there. Oh, that's awful. She gets into the bedroom, sees her mother lying in a pool of blood with her head smashed open. Like, caved in. She screams. She runs down the stairs, out the front door to any house nearby that she's. she can make it to. So the first one she runs to is across the street to Sherry Lewis's home. Right. Now,

Sherry said she and her friend, the one who had been sleeping over, obviously could hear the screams. And then they heard her slamming on the door, but they were so terrified that they couldn't move. Right. And I don't blame them. They were kids. Well, you're like, is this like a victim at my door? Is this like the guy across the street breaking in? Exactly. So no one answered. But she said that the next morning, she was actually supposed to be babysitting Joel and Debbie that night. Oh my goodness. And she said, quote, when I opened the door in the morning, when Shelley's parents came to collect her, the whole door was a mess of blood. I remember my hands being in this sticky blood. Because when Judy had come, she had smeared blood all over the French doors, the windows just trying, because she was bleeding.

That must have been so terrified. It's insane. So Judy doesn't get an answer there. So she runs to another neighbor's house, Marshall Ross's home. Right. He immediately ran downstairs, let her come in. He helped her to his couch. He tried to calm her. Like, just, he was like, what the hell's going on? And then he called the police in an ambulance. Then while they were on their way, he, Marshall Ross ran over to the Paralison's home while, you know, because he was like, I'm just going to try to help whatever's happening. Because Judy's trying to tell him what's happening, but it's like chaos. Right. So he said what he saw was he saw the children. He saw, he saw, Debbie and Deborah and Joel.

And he like tried to get them away from Harold. And Harold, he said, just, he just saw him like strolling through the hallway. And he said, he looked right at him and said, go on home. Don't bother me. And then just kept walking. What? And he said he was covered in blood. Go on home.

Don't bother me. Don't bother me. What? I be like, you're trying to murder your family. so it's kind of like my civic duty to stop that. I feel like you're kind of bothering me. Yeah, you're kind of bothering the entire neighborhood. You're bothering a lot of people right now.

The system of justice. Now, the coroner's report said that Marshall Ross saw Harold walk into the bathroom. He started banging around in the drawers, like clearly looking for something in particular. Yeah. He was tossing, you know, bottles around and everything and eventually found what he was looking for. He said he had trailed and smeared blood everywhere by this point. This scene must have been horrific. And he said he finally found what he's looking for.

He found Nimbutal. Now Nambutal is a barbiturate, and it was used in this time period and before it as an anti-anxiety and sleeping aid. It is a barbiturate, like I said, so it is known for sedation. Barbiturates are known for sedation and for like calming someone in distress. That's what they tried to say, Marilyn Monroe overdosed on. Yes, actually, I was going to mention that. You may know it by the name Pento Barbital, and any vet tech or vets out there, that they may know it as the drug used to peacefully anesthetize and euthanize animals.

It's also known as death in a bottle because it is easy to overdose on. It's very easy. And since it's used to sedate, you know, anesthetize and euthanize, it is part of, like, the doctors will use it to euthanize patients. Right. It's part of, like, the death with dignity. discussion because it's touted as a good method for euthanasian humans because it is a known as like a, you know, it's sedation. I was just going to say.

It's not a violent death. Right. It killed Judy Garland. Oh, shit. And like you said, supposedly Marilyn Monroe. Yeah. Probably not by her. It probably did.

Yeah, just not by her hand. So Harold knew this, obviously. He's a doctor. He made sure he was going to get this job done. So he took two nimbutal pills, which he cracked open and mixed with water. And then he finished it off with 31 more pills of a different substance. Whoa. Those 31 pills were some kind of sedative or tranquilizer of some sort.

So he really just did it. He knew what he was doing. Now, Marshall Ross said he saw him walk back into his bedroom and just lay on his bed calmly. Next to his dead wife. Next to his dead wife. His like, butchered dead wife. Yep. You know.

Now, police were there within 15 minutes. They came real quick. It was around 5.15-ish in the morning when the LAPD were on the scene. They found him not in the bed. They found him on the floor. And his head was on a blood-covered pillow that he had either taken from his own bed and it was covered in Lillian's blood. Or it was covered in Judy's blood, one of the other. He was laying his head on that.

And he was still holding the ball peen hammer in his hand laying on the floor. Oh, man. That book, Dante's Divine Comedy, was still on his nightstand, where he had left it, but now it was opened to a certain page. The certain page is Canto I, and it says, midway upon the journey of our life, I found myself within a forest dark, for the straightforward pathway had been lost. That says a lot. Very, very, I don't know. Very. Just very, very.

Very. Be it. Very. Very appropriate. Yeah. That's what I meant. Aproparl. Apropo.

Apropo. So he was still clinically alive when they got there. Oh, shit. He was breathing at this point, but he had died by the time the ambulance actually got there. So when the police were there, he was still breathing by the time the ambulance came, he was gone. And it was only a few minutes. Yeah. So he was going to die anyway.

It came out later. So when this all happened, everybody's like, what? Yeah. Because one of the weird things is like, okay, so he killed his wife out of nowhere, first of all. Like, this came out of nowhere. It seemed to everybody. And then he tried to kill one of his children, but not the other two? Well, do you think that he was going to kill the other two if nobody interrupted him?

But nobody had interrupted him. He was just bringing them back to bed. He put them back into bed and he was walking away. He was not attacking them. I don't know. And all he had to do was attack them with a hammer. Do you think that it was like somehow like religious in a sense? Like they're innocent?

There is an interesting theory that some people have floated. I found some people, some sources have found that, you know, he was in the military for a short stint. And he was listed at having no dependents. But the timing of his military service when he was listed as having dependents would have been the time when Judy was born. Okay. So he would have a dependent. But what if that dependent is not his sentence? dependent. Yeah. What if Judy is someone else's child? What if that plays into why she got it?

Maybe. I mean, that does make sense. It could be. Obviously, this is all speculatory because people are just trying to like find breadcrumbs here because no one knows. Right. It is a strange mystery that Judy was chosen and the other two weren't. That is weird. But it's very, yeah, it's just a really strange thing. So what did come out later was via court records. And there were some reports that Harold Perilsen had made several suicide attempts in the months leading up to this. Yeah. So this didn't come out of nowhere. No.

At first, everyone's like, what? This is crazy. And then when this comes out, it's like, what? Not so crazy. So there's all this dark shit happening and no one knew. Obviously, none of them killed him. But Lillian had known, obviously, and had stopped most of these. And she had tried to get him committed.

Oh. Now, she knew something was very wrong and that he was on a very bad path. Like she could see this was not going to end well. But she couldn't just get him the help that she wanted to because one, you know, it's the 1950s. She's a woman. Yeah. He's a man. Right.

There's that. Two, he's a very well-known and well-respected member of society and a doctor. And in the medical community. And in the medical community. So she's not going to have a whole lot of luck if he doesn't want to go somewhere to get him to go somewhere. And I wonder if the reason why he killed her was because he was mad that she was trying to stop him from killing himself. Exactly.

because so they think that maybe there were doctors that were notified of his state of health and that he had tried to try to end his life several times. And so they were on board with committing him some of these doctors. They were like, we can do this, but they were like, we need to time this right. Right. We can't just attack him and like do this. We need to try to get this right. And get him to like go willingly.

Exactly. So maybe the plan was to commit him, but it was going to be happening soon. And he found out. And he decided that's not going to happen. I'm just going to end this. Which is either way, it's so sad. It's like, why couldn't you just end it like for you and not everyone else? Now, Lillian's family got guardianship of Deborah and Joel.

Lillian's sister Gertrude actually petitioned for to take over as trustee. And by all means now, they're all still alive. All three of them. And they're all doing great. They're married. They're having lives of their own. I believe Judy is like a jewelry designer. Oh, wow.

get it, girl. I'm not going to say their married names or anything, because I don't think they really They deserve like an anonymity. If they want to be, if they want to write a book or something, that's their story. Yeah. But yeah, so they're all alive, they're all flourishing as far as I could tell. So

in 1960, a year later, the house was sold in a probate auction. So it's sat for like a year. The people who got it were Emily and Julian Enriquez. Okay. But this is where it gets even weirder. They never moved in. They just bought this house at auction and then they just never moved in.

They moved a few of their things there, but it wasn't things to live there. It just became like a storage unit for them. Yeah, I remember like, I remember that from the first time we did this. It was like, and all that old family's furniture was still there, right? Like covered up. It was all still there. The Christmas gifts were still there. Yeah, but I found something interesting about that. So, So yeah, so they're just like bringing stuff in there. It seems like they go there to like pick things up to put things in. But it's like, why'd you buy a mansion? Yeah, like not like a storage.

Why not just the storage unit? Like that's really like impressive. Like my storage unit is a mansion in the Los Angeles Hills. But like, wow. Yeah, it's strange. But it's weird. And it's like, did they, nobody knows. It's like, did they try to do stuff in the house and it got weird?

And they were like, we don't want to live here. I don't know. I don't know. We'll never know. So it did stay in their hands until 1994 when Emily passed away and she left the home to their only son, Rudolph. Now, he kept it and he did the same exact thing. Yeah. He didn't move in either. And he said that he would never live there. Like he was like, no. But it's, and it's like, why did they buy this in the first? I just don't understand it. Yeah. I don't get it. Rudolph said to the Los Angeles Times in 2009, quote, I don't know what, I don't know that I want to live there or even stay there. So he was like, no, thank you. No, I mean, houses hold on to energy. And this is bad energy. Yeah, to say the least. So apparently, so I think it was like a blogger or something went to this house during

this whole like period where it was like sitting. And they got like photos of the house. They looked in at all the stuff. And they were the ones that saw like weird shit. Like they saw like SpaghettiOs just sitting on the counter and like a Christmas tree with a wrap presents. So people were like, oh, my. God, that's the Perilsen stuff. It's not. So the Spaghettios weren't marketed until

1965. Yeah, that doesn't make any sense. These were things that were brought in and stored there. Yeah. So there was that Christmas tree thing. And everybody was like, well, why were there Christmas tree in Christmas tree presents? Oh, well. And Christmas presents. Well, there is, of course, the idea that, like, the Perilsons were wrapping Christmas gifts that night. So who knows? And they had like been celebrating it like lightly like you know just to like be with friends and family like because they just liked the community of it. So there's that but there's also this rumor that a lot of people have hung on to that somebody rented this place between it going to auction and that's happening and that they weren't told of the murder suicide and that when they found out they just

got the hell out of there and they left the Christmas gifts and the Christmas tree up. Interesting. and that it's just been sitting there. But there's no concrete answer. That's so strange. Nobody knows where that actually, that Christmas tree came from. Because it's not Julian and Emily's.

And it's not Rudolph's. Ew. And there's Christmas presents that were wrapped. Now this place had like, when it was sitting there like dormant, it had like burglar alarms going off all the time. Oh yeah. Weird like just weird lights that would go on and on.

It was, there was a lot of weird activity there. And people would come to like, you know, do seances. there. People had picnics in the backyard just to be like spooky. That's a strange situation. But there was also people who people, the neighbors said that they would wake up to hear like hearing screaming in the middle of the night coming from that house. What? And they would call the police and no one would be in there. Nope. Yeah. Now that media. I wouldn't even want to live next door.

I would that would be scary. I would love to live next door. No. I'd love it. I like to sleep. that medium article I mentioned by Jeff Mesh. He is actually, he's part of the, like his article that he wrote about this is going to be turned into a movie about this. I'm so excited. Because he did like a really great article about it. In his article, he talked to a guy named Dr. David Adams and he was a psychologist who like specialized basically in husbands or in who fathers who killed their family annihilators. And he was like, like, who, what kind of guy does this? Yeah.

Who is this? And he said it's usually, he said if the guy is killing his wife and at least one of his children, it's going to be an older guy, usually, not a younger guy, which I think that is probably swayed a little bit, because I've seen a few younger dates. But they said usually, I think the average has been in their 50s. And usually they're an average of seven years older than their spouse. Interesting. What's interesting is Harold.

was 50 years old and he was eight years older than Lillian. That's strange. Isn't that weird? Yeah. And he said, quote, many of these guys, these types of perpetrators are very invested in their public image. When there is a prospect that their reputation or status can be harmed, they suffer a narcissistic injury. Their murders are almost like a type of damage control. I mean, which seems very relevant in the case. She was trying to get him committed. That would be really bad for his image. Exactly. It honestly seems very relevant in here. And it seems like he was struggling with his mental health because his self-proclaimed failures and his finances.

Yeah. That was going to take a toll on your mental health. Of course. Because you're trying to keep your family together. You're trying to provide. People think that that Dante's page does mean something, obviously. I mean it has to. Because he didn't leave like a suicide note or any kind of like indication of why he did this.

He just left that. But he did open that page. Because remember, he was 50 years old. So it starts with like midway through. my life. Right. He was exactly midway through like the typical, you know, you always say. Yeah, his quote unquote life. And it talks about being lost. Yep. And then it talks about finding himself in a dark place. Yeah. It's literally exactly what happened. It's like spot on. What's interesting is California's civil code has a three year rule for quote unquote murder houses.

Uh-huh. And realtors are legally obligated to tell people of any kind of like violent death that happened in the home. but only if it occurred within three years of the date an offer is made. Wow. So anything before that, they're like, do, do, do, but do. That's messed up. If my realtor didn't tell me, I would be so upset at them. Because I'd be like, I'd just want to know. Also, I'd call them later and be like, hey, what's up?

No. Rudolph, the son of Emily and Julian, sorry, he died in 2015, and he didn't have any children to pass the home on to. So it went to public auction again. Right. Now, the house was listed for $2.75 million in July of 2016, and it went for $2.3 million as a probate sale in 2019. The person who bought it is Lisa Bloom, who is a civil rights attorney and former true TV host and the daughter of Gloria Alres.

Oh, okay. Just, you know, no big deal. Makes so much sense. That's cool. She and her husband, Braden, they bought it at this auction, and they completely gutted the place. Uh-huh. Gutted the place. Usually that brings up bad shit.

It probably did. It's like kind of sad when you look at the pictures. You're like, because in the listing, it even says, quote, taken down to the studs. And it's like, aw. It just kind of is like a bummer. It takes all the old. Historic. Like the ballroom's gutted.

Everything's gutted. They ended up listing it at $3.5 million. So it was almost like they flipped it. And they did this. So they didn't live in it and they didn't finish it. They like took it down to the studs and then put it up. What? Yeah.

So everybody's like something happened. Well, someone did buy it last year in 2020. Oh. Someone bought it. So that's when their bad luck of 2020 started. I was going to say, I don't know who bought it. I don't know what they're going to do with it. That's just kind of like hanging in the air at this moment.

But a fun fact that I'm sure a lot of people know is this murder house was the inspiration for season one of American Horror Story. Murder house. That's what brought this all like into the world. Yeah. And like I said, a movie about the house is in talks. It's in the works. Which I think is this is a great movie. Oh, I'm surprised it's not already a movie.

Yeah. This is perfect for a movie. I think the producers are going to be Louisa Iskin. and John Wonder. They're from the coalition group, and the film will be written by Joshua Melkin, who wrote Cabin Fever 2. Oh.

And it's going to be based on that article that was written by Jeff Mesh. So that's really cool. Congratulations to him. Seriously. That's awesome. But yeah, that's the Los Felice Murder House. We revamped.

It's there. It's there. But now someone owns it. So it's like one of those things that it's not public property. Yeah, it's not public property. pretty anymore. And hopefully we'll find out, like, who owns it or, like, what they've done to it or what they plan to do to it. You almost wish, like, someone would make, and it's, like, super, like, macab of me, but I'm like, you should just make it, like, a cool, like, museum. Yeah, no, you

should. Like a morbid-y kind of, like, Hollywood Museum. Yes. I feel like it would be, like, a perfect place. It would. But I know that's fucked up. It isn't, it isn't. But I am who I am, and that's all that I am. Sam, Popeye. I am. So that's the Los Police Murder House. I hope you liked the new version of it because I got a lot more information this time around.

I liked it. Thank you. You're welcome. And I enjoyed going back into it and finding out all the updates. And super sorry if you heard my cats running around my apartment while this was happening. We don't usually record here anymore because of the... that reason. So. Yeah. But they're really cute. They are. Miam, meow. And they're calm now that we're done. Yeah, of course. Franklin's like in his hot tub and Lux is just like actually sleeping right next to the

roadcaster. Cute. All right. Well, we hope you keep listening. And we hope you keep it weird. But not so bad that you are a really good doctor and you're like, oh my God, I'm going to invent this new way to do this thing. And then somebody takes all your money and then all your money is gone and you're kind of sad, but you keep spending money that you don't have. And then you go a little bit off the rails and you're kill your whole family don't do that don't do it bye bye