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Reposting this art because a) the OP didn’t own it anyway and b) I didn’t want to spam them….
@wehaveallgotknives requested a liveblog of my reading of Murder Plays A Ukulele by MK Arnold, published in the July 1941 issue of Master Detective Magazine. You can read the saga of my interest in the magazine here, including a search that it turns out went ALL THE WAY to the LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, which is where the scan of my copy came from.
If you wish to avoid tons of reblogs of this post as I read, block it now or blacklist “murder plays a ukulele”. I have pizza, cherry sprite zero, and murder on my docket for the next hour.
Also I think you all need to know, I didn’t realize, this isn’t fiction. This is the true story of a ukulele-adjacent murder. It opens with a woman discovering a dead man in a field while fetching in her cow for the evening milking….
…..in San Jose, California.
(We’re going to assume the dead man is the one with the mustache.)
The year: 1926
The place: San Jose, California
The victim: Andrew Pashuta, who has died from several blows to the head
The ukulele: not yet in evidence.
It appears the hero of the piece may be young Santa Clara County deputy sheriff Ed Hicks, who was so excited to hear that a dead body had been found while he was off shift that they had to stop him from driving to the crime scene and redirect him to the morgue.
These are their stories. *Law & Order bumper noise*
….Ed Hicks opens his investigation by telephoning his ten year old daughter to ask her why the name Andrew Pashuta is so familiar to him.
AND SHE KNOWS THE ANSWER. It’s because he was dating Edith, who used to work as a maid for the Hicks family but who had recently moved to San Francisco (that’s her being cradled lovingly if possessively by the mustachio’d Andy in the picture).
I didn’t even mention this earlier but the tagline of this story is “A ukulele – an abandoned car – and a bicycle on the beach…smart detective work linked them together and nabbed the killer.”
I can’t wait to see how the bicycle on the beach plays into it.
It turns out Andy Pashuta played the ukulele (no surprise) and was seen palling around with a Suspicious Character who also played the ukulele and wore a blue coat, hiking pants, and leather puttees. I always thought puttees were a type of trouser but apparently they are a strap wrapped around the ankle and calf.
“This meager description was promptly wired to Los Angeles police by Sheriff Lyle […] he stated also in the telegram that the wanted man might have two ukuleles in his possession…”
And a little later they confirm the guy who stole Pashuta’s car abandoned it near LA, but “Looking for a ukulele player in Los Angeles was like looking for a needle in a haystack.”
Apparently LA was a hotbed of ukulele activity in the twenties.
@strangeselkie I do not believe Andy Pashuta was bludgeoned to death by one of the two ukuleles but admittedly the ukuleles have not yet been found in the narrative.
Meanwhile, Ed Hicks has been given permission to go to LA to locate the suspicious “Fred Roland” (clearly an alias) and his two incriminating ukuleles. He believes “Fred” may be staying with a woman he knows in Venice, California, referred to as “a near-by beach resort”.
He is armed only with his map, his badge, and his wits, the brave Ed Hicks.
Sidebar: the fourth page of this gripping account of true crime investigation is primarily taken up with an advertisement for the euphemistically named “Internal Baths”.
In fifteen minutes your impacted colon is thoroughly cleansed of its whole foul mess; the puetrefying, delayed waste is loosened and washed away. Often the relief is immense – often a new sense of vigor and well-being sweeps over you.
They do say that most detective work is very boring, and after a lot of evidence of that in the form of asking a lot of questions and not getting much information, Ed Hicks has finally got a hot lead – two LA cops, Christensen and Whaley, recall having seen someone matching the description on a beach earlier that day.
THE BICYCLE APPEARS
OR RATHER DISAPPEARS
It turns out the cops ran a man matching “Fred’s” description off the beach after being told by a young boy that the man had thrown his bicycle into the ocean. The man admitted he threw the bike into the ocean after the boy caught him and a girl canoodling in the sand, and the cops made him go get it out of the ocean again, which is. Just. Wow.
Also he had a ukulele with him which after the brutal slaying of a ukulelist in San Jose is cause for suspicion.
Anyway they are now on their way to pick the guy up, having gotten his address from a cabbie he failed to pay for his ride.
Frank Galloway, our purported murderer, has been found! In his possession are two ukuleles. Why would any man have two ukuleles?
“Well,” he said huskily, “you’ve got me. I wondered how long it would take.”
It turns out Frank Galloway is an ex convict wanted for deserting the army and having absconded with government funds, although his prison term was “on Dyer Act charges.” I was hoping Dyer Act would be something weird and interesting but it’s just car theft legislation.
OH SHIT ALSO
“Why are you making this statement?”
The answer took his hearers by surprise. “Because, by so doing, I hope that I may ask for, and receive, a death sentence!”
Ukulele players. We’re all drama queens, you guys.
(There’s still like 2/3 of a page left so clearly the story doesn’t end here!)
Oh man, this is so anticlimactic. The murder wasn’t over a woman or a debt or even over a ukulele, he just killed Andy Pashuta because he’d told him that he was an ex-convict on the run from the Army and after they got in a fight, Andy threatened to dun him in.
This is the lesson, kids – never tell a ukulele player what your plans are.
It does turn out that Frank Galloway is also the “only black sheep of a prominent and highly respected northern California family.” I guess he’s like. Galloway of the Chico Galloways or something. (Californians will find that funny.)
Stay tuned, there’s still like an entire segment on his activities in prison…
Well, all good stories must come to an end.
The ukulele killer Frank Galloway eventually got life in prison in Folsom for his crime, where he became sports editor of the Folsom prison newspaper and continued to play the ukulele. Presumably this was his own and not the one he stole from Andy Pashuta after murdering him “with the crank of his Chevrolet automobile” which I think means the crank he used to wind up the engine with, this being the 20s.
He got paroled in 1940, and immediately formed a stick-up gang and terrorized Los Angeles for a while until he was recaptured. Presumably this is why the article about him appeared in 1941.
Can you imagine. Like. MK Arnold, bless her, trying to drum up ideas for a true crime story for Master Detective Magazine, stumbles across Frank Galloway’s arrest for robbery and when she asks some cop about he’s like “Oh yeah, he’s the fella got caught in a murder on account of his ukulele twenty years ago”.
MK Arnold: Beg pardon?
Random cop: Buckle in, sister, this is a wild ride.
She does take very great care to remind us that Edith, the girlfriend of the murdered man, had nothing to do with his death or the subsequent theft of his ukulele (and car).
So that’s the story, you guys. The privileged scion of the wealthy and erudite Chico Galloways came to a bad end in Folsom Prison – as any Los Angeles ukulele player might. Truly a cautionary tale for the ages.
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