From the book - "Dr. Stuart E. Noland (correctly spelled Nolan) gave his wife, (Kay Larson Pengra Noland) a hypodermic out her wrist, combed her hair, put a jade plaque on her, then got in the bath tub and committed suicide. 8963 Burton Way, Hollywood, Calif. 11/15/1941."
Dr. Stuart Elliot Nolan, 41, an emergency room physician of Los Angeles, and his bride of three months, the former Katherine "Kay", aka Viola Larson Pengra, 26, were found dead early in the evening in their apartment at 8963 Benton Way by police who say the Nolans ended their lives in a weird suicide pact.
The Murder-Suicide:
According to police, Dr. Nolan performed the murder in a almost ceremonial manner on his wife. Everything was done in a neat, medical fashion. Police surmised that Dr. Nolan and his wife were first in the bathroom, removed each other's clothing, and then while she was in the bathtub, Dr. Nolan had evidently administered a local anesthetic via a hypodermic needle, rendering the fatal operation painless so his wife would not suffer.
Not wanting to make much of a mess on the bathroom floor, he placed a bucket underneath her arm which will soon be dripping with blood. After he felt she was sufficiently numbed, he then made a precise surgical incision to sever arteries in his wife's right wrist either with a scalpel or surgical scissors. It was possible for her to bleed to death with scarcely any discomfort. Since very little blood was discovered on the bed, police believed Dr. Nolan used a bucket to catch his wife's blood. When she had been drained of all blood, Dr. Nolan gently washed off any trace of the life fluid. He apparently had disposed of the blood, presumably in the bathtub.
After her body was cleaned, he carried the body of his wife into the bedroom, sat her in a chair at her vanity table, and lovingly combed her silken hair. He carried her again, one last time, and placed her gently on their marital bed. He then methodically combed her gleaming red hair once more, arranging it carefully on the pillow, then, with a soft pink ribbon, suspended his good luck charm, an expensive solid jade medallion from her neck, onto her motionless breast.
Then, after saying a final goodbye to his bride, say police, he went into the bathroom adjacent to the bedroom, fully nude, climbed into the bathtub, full of warm water, lay back and slashed his own left wrist. Nolan's body, both similar precise cuts on his arm. Both had bled to death.
Dr. Nolan was missing all day Friday and yesterday from his duties at the La Cienega Emergency Hospital at 368 S. La Cienega Blvd. La Voie recalled that same day of the murder-suicide, Dr Nolan did not show up at his clinic at all. Mrs La Voie said she anxiously called the doctor at his home. When he picked up the phone, he said "I just can't make it - do whatever you think best about my appointments." She said that his voice seemed happy and relaxed and she heard sweet music playing in the background.
A tenant in his apartment building noticed that a light burned all day and into the evening in the Nolan apartment. Alarmed, the tenant telephoned the hospital and Mrs. Maurice La Voie, a nurse sent her husband to the Nolan apartment to investigate. He knocked on the door and, receiving no answer, entered to find the two corpses still and motionless like marble statues. The surgical scissors still dangled from the fingers of Dr. Nolan's right hand.
A pile of unwashed dishes filled the sink, remnants of a last supper on the table, a blank recording found in the open phonograph in the apartment, suggests that he might have been going to leave a verbal suicide note. But he must have changed his mind, perhaps overcome by his own emotions, and wrote out the suicide note, writing it as it were a prescription. Discovered on a table in the bedroom the note read as follows:
"Mrs. Nolan's father is A. Larsen, 800 block Harvard, Santa Monica. She wanted him to have this message - that she sends her love and that we both agreed this was the only thing for us to do. Please notify Mrs. La Voie. We regret the trouble that this will cause."
Police estimated the couple had been dead 12 hours or more when they were discovered around 6pm.
Kay's father demanded that police make an full investigation of the strange deaths in order to "clear her name." A suicide pact theory advanced shortly after the bodies were discovered. but had been discarded by police and by Albert R. Larsen,, father of Kay. he said "I do not believe that she wanted to die.," Larsen told Lieutenant Carl Shoemaker. "She had absolutely no motive for suicide. I believe she had no part in bringing about her own death."
A post-mortem examination by Dr. Frederick Newbarr, Assistant County Autopsy Surgeon, confirmed that the cause of death was shock and loss of blood. Dr. Newbarr found a discoloration on Kay's arm which might have been caused by a hypodermic needle discovered in Dr.Nolan's medical kit near the bed. At the request of the police, Dr. Newbarr was to make a chemical analysis of Kay's brain to determine whether of not an opiate was administered to her.
The coroner's office said there would be no inquest into the deaths, after police came to the conclusion that Dr. Nolan murdered his wife and then took his own because of mental despondency.
Mrs. HE Nolan had notified police that she would come to Los Angeles from San Luis, Potosi, Mexico to arrange for the funeral for her son, Dr. Nolan.
The Jade Medallion:
Friends revealed that Dr. Nolan had spent a lifetime searching for the curious jade ornament because vivid, recurrent dreams told him it would prove a talisman of good fortune. These dreams started during his boyhood when he was eight years old and haunted him ever since. It seemed at the time a magical thing that would give its owner powers similar to those Aladdin derived from his lamp. Dreaming, he held it in his hand, rubbed it, and the menacing phantoms of the nightmare were routed. All through his life, he spent his spare time seeking out the jade medallion, saying, "It exists, it's here, somewhere. One day I'll surely stumble on it, and when that happens it will keep me as safe in waking life as it has in dreams."
After visiting numerous antique, jewelry and rummage shops, he came up empty, but in doing so, he became a connoisseur of jade, collecting many pieces of the exquisite stone. Friends said that he was rapturous with joy last year when, in an obscure Hollywood jewelry shop, he found the piece, an exact duplicate of his dream symbol. He did not haggle over the price, which was high, no doubt. So obsessed with this medallion, he surely would have bought it if doing so had meant selling his practice and mortgaging his whole future.
Finally possessing the mythical jade pendant, he carried it in his pocket everyday and felt as if he had a secret power that would grant him wishes. His first request was for an ideal spouse. At about the same time he met the beautiful model who would become his bride. He fell madly in love with her at first sight, and presented her with the sign of the two jade fish on their wedding day as a token of his happiness.
The translucent white jade was of a rounded, disk shape and carved into its surface was a symbol of two fish. To the Chinese, a pair of fish was symbolic of the joys of union, particularly of a marriage and sexual nature and the fish emblem was also believed to be a charm against bad luck since it is included among the auspicious signs on the footprints of the Buddha. “Like fish in water” is a common Chinese saying used to describe two people in love. A jade pendant carved in the shape of two fish swimming together represents two lovers and is considered an appropriate gift for a young couple.
At weddings, the double fish symbol represents the meaning of a harmonious union between the couple. It also carries the meaning of fertility, a surplus of happiness, marital bliss and sensual pleasure. Worn around the neck as a good luck charm or protective amulet, it ensures that the family stays together harmoniously. The phrase “staying together” has many implications — it means that no harm will come to any member of the family, no outsider will entice a member of the family away, there are good relations between the generations and between siblings and, most important of all, the husband and wife will not do anything to jeopardize the unity of the family. Divorces and separations will thus be reduced.
Prior Lives:
It seemed that Dr. Nolan's wish was fulfilled when he met the beautiful Kay with her titian hair and fair freckled face, she was known as the "bubble girl" because of some widely published sexy photographs in which she was sitting in a bathtub full of soap bubbles. Her first marriage to a Hollywood auditor named Ed Pengra had failed.
This was Dr. Nolan's second marriage too. He was the son of a well-known surgeon, his parents living in San Luis, Potosi, Mexico. Prior to his marriage to Kay, he married stage screen ingenue named Grace Gordon on July 2, 1928, after eloping to Nevada in a secret wedding. Their romance started when Miss Gordon was admitted to the hospital four months prior following a car accident. Doctors found that her skull was fractured and Dr. Nolan was assigned as house physician to care for her. It was during these months that their affection for one another blossomed.
There were no reports of any quarrels or incidents about his first marriage other than it ended in a friendly divorce. Newspaper articles revealed that the couple routinely attended parties and society events, weddings, etc. While his ex-wife continued to frequent the same society circles they had known together, Dr. Nolan withdrew from society and delved more into his practice and alternately, his dreams.
Aftermath:
Dr Nolan's friends were somewhat taken aback by the conclusion of the couple's brief marriage, they felt that the way in which he performed the operation, and then killed himself, was characteristic of the doctor, who was known to be mystical and unusually sensitive. "Doctor Nolan could not stand the thought of giving pain," said his secretary Emily La Voie, when she learned of the tragedy. "He would never perform the most trifling service which might hurt a client without first giving an anesthetic."
Mrs. Nolan, 26 when she died, was a former professional photographic model. Detective Lieutenants HE Meyers and WA Ellenson of the Wilshire Police Station said the couple had been married about three months. Friends of the Nolans, they said, reported the couple were married shortly after she obtained an interlocutory decree from another man, whose name was not immediately disclosed.
Meantime, detectives were puzzling further over the enigma of the double death. Vainly they hunted for clues to furnish a motive as to whether the double death was result of a suicide pact, or a murder and suicide. From Mrs. Emile La Voie, secretary to Dr. Nolan, police investigators learned that the Nolans lived a tempestuous life of passionate devotion and passionate quarreling. According to the secretary, Dr. Nolan seemed to be depressed because of the quarrels. Other friends said the marriage was a "rapturous misery" for both parties.
No actual explanation was given for the tragedy, but friends said they frequently quarreled and that their married life apparently never had been completely happy. So absorbed were they with each other, that they seldom mingled in society. Keeping to themselves most of the time, their fashionable apartment became much smaller. Little quibbles turned into larger arguments. It seems to be no middle ground - only extreme highs or lows. The bitter quarrels always ended up with extravagant reconciliations.
"Once, after they had only been married a few weeks," Mrs. La Voie remarked, "I said: 'Why don't you separate if you can't get along? The doctor [forebodingly] replied, "'I can't leave her. This is our last romance.' And Kay replied in almost the same words when I mentioned the matter to her."
Leroy Sanderson, Captain of Detectives of the Wilshire Division said that he learned that the couple had a history of prolonged drinking. The doctor, he said, had also been hard pressed financially for some time and had neglected his duties at an emergency hospital at 368 La Cienega Blvd. Sanderson opined that Kay may have been drugged before her husband opened a vein in her wrist which caused her to bleed to death.
Dr. Nolan was in ill health a few months prior, the police said, but did not elaborate on the diagnosis. Rather than split up his free time with hobbies or going out during evenings, to give himself some space, like other husbands, Dr Nolan would stay late at the clinic, brooding and pouring his feelings into his own artwork. Between patients, he began turning out weird carvings; morbid drawings of skulls and toothsome demons glaring at innocent maidens. Examples of his grotesque artwork are below:
He wrote equally fantastic poems. One of the last, written at the time of the murder-suicide had a bit of foreboding:
".....I slake
Off at Love's fount my
thirst for beauty
And stop thy lips-
when speech of morn
and duty
Sullies them - with
kisses! Let us drink
Vast and slow delight-
ful draughts and sink
From our passion to
forgetfulness
In the infinite luxury
of weariness!"
Another example:
"Certainly, darling, you are wise.
To be chary [cautiously or suspiciously reluctant] of your favor
Until thoroughly you scrutinize
What Time will bring. If its savor
Should not meet your taste
Just take vanilla for a flavor
And feed cupid on ant paste
To stop the rascal's squirming
Then you can gay tune hum
And never quite get over yearnings
in a life secure but humdrum
To hear the little god singing
As your heartstrings wildly strum."
Suicide prevention
If you are experiencing a suicidal or mental health crisis or are concerned for someone else, contact your local suicide prevention hotline.
🇺🇸 US ☎︎ 988 or 1-800-273-TALK (8255)
🇨🇦 CA ☎︎ 1-833-456-4566
🇬🇧 UK ☎︎ 0800-689-5652
🇦🇺 AUS ☎︎ 13-11-14 or 1300-659-467
ROK ROK ☎︎ 1393
🇩🇪 DE ☎︎ 0800-111-0-111
🇪🇸 ES ☎︎ 024
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