DASTARDLY DADS FROM THE ARCHIVES (Los Angeles, California - 1940)

Account is from Martin Fido and David Southwell, True Crime: The Infamous Villains of Modern History and their Hideous Crimes (2008).

Incestuous Father of Five Kills Wife (1940)

After delays and appeals, 61-year-old WILLIAM SPINELLI of Los Angeles has finally been executed for the murder of his wife, Rose, in 1938. Rose, who worked as a maid in Beverly Hills, supported William and their five children, while her unemployed husband loafed around and drank. The quarrelled frequently, especially over his incestuous relations with his daughters, one of whom is thought to have borne him a child.

On December 20, 1938, one of the Spinelli daughters called the police to say that her mother was missing. Detectives found blood all over the bathroom and bedroom. Spinelli said he had cut himself. He showed them a letter dated December 12 in which Rose said she was eloping to South America.

Forensic scientists concluded that no one could have survived losing all that blood, and Spinelli was arrested. Enquiries in the neighbourhood revealed that on the day Mrs. Spinelli disappeared, William kept a fire going in the incinerator for five hours, and made several trips out of the house carrying heavy packages.

After a gas station operator revealed that Spinelli had persuaded him to write "Rose's" departure letter, and Spinelli's son told of being threatened by his father when he asked questions about the incinerator and Rose's disappearance, Spinelli finally confessed. He had killed his wife with a hatchet during one of thier quarrels; then left a note for the family before going out to a restaurant to fortify himself for the long job of getting rid of the body.