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Episode: Episode 624: The Murder of Cheryl Perveler

Author: Morbid Network | Wondery
Duration: 00:55:27

Episode Shownotes

When police were called to the scene of shooting at the Castillion Apartments in Los Angeles on April 20, 1968, they assumed the victim, twenty-two-year-old Cheryl Perveler, had been shot in a robbery gone wrong. However, when they began looking into her personal life, they soon realized Cheryl’s killer could

have been much closer to home.In most cases of individual murders, detectives always look at the spouse first, and in this case, there was a lot to look at. Cheryl had recently married Paul Perveler, a former Los Angeles Police officer with a checkered past and an obvious obsession with wealth and power. Yet the more they investigated Paul Perveler, the more detectives began to suspect they didn’t have just one murder on their hands, and it was starting to look like Cheryl’s death was the culmination of a larger and far more shocking conspiracy than anyone had expected. Thank you to the Incredible Dave White of Bring Me the Axe Podcast for research and Writing support!ReferencesBraxton, Greg. 1982. "Woman asks public to keep killer ex-husband jailed." Los Angeles Times, September 19: 529.Bugliosi, Vincent, and Ken Hurwitz. 2004. Till Death Do Us Part: A True Murder Mystery. New York, NY: W.W. Norton and Company.2017. A Crime to Remember. Performed by Christine Connor and Elise Graves.Eintoss, Ron. 1969. "Death penalty asked in insurance murders." Los Angeles Times, February 25: 26.—. 1969. "Jury asks death for Perveler, life in prison for girlfriend." Los Angeles Times, February 26: 29.El Sereno Star. 1966. "Gun victim found in house fire." El Sereno Star, December 15: 1.Farr, Bill. 1986. "Ex-officer in prison for killing fails in parole bid." Los Angeles Times, August 30: 2.Haynes, Roy, and Dial Torgerson. 1968. "Murder charges filed against pair in double indemnity case." Los Angeles Times, May 3: 3.Los Angeles Times. 1968. "Ex-officer, woman ask seperate trials." Los Angeles Times, November 15: 41.Newton, Tom, and Dial Torgerson. 1968. "Ex-policeman, woman accused of killing mates for insuarance." Los Angeles Times, May 2: 1.The Register. 1969. "First degree murder asked in mates case." The Register (Santa Ana, CA), February 5: 15.United Press International. 1969. "Dual murder case goes to jury soon." Stockton Evening and Sunday Record, February 12: 11.Valley Times. 1968. "Transcript says alleged killer told of slaying." Valley Times, May 21:See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Summary

In this episode of the Morbid podcast, the hosts explore the murder of Cheryl Perveler, a 22-year-old woman found dead in her car outside the Castillion Apartments in Los Angeles in 1968. Initially dismissed as a robbery, the investigation uncovers a web of personal complexities involving her husband, Paul Perveler, a former LAPD officer with a troubled past. As detectives reveal suspicious behaviors and connections between Cheryl's murder and potential conspiracies, a deeper narrative emerges about motives for financial gain and personal vendettas. With a blend of true crime storytelling and humor, the podcast unveils the chilling details surrounding this tragic case.

Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (Episode 624: The Murder of Cheryl Perveler) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.

Full Transcript

00:00:00 Speaker_03
Hey weirdos, it's Ash here, ready to share a little secret. Have you heard of Wondery Plus? With ad-free episodes and one week early access, it's like having an all-access pass to our lighthearted nightmare.

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00:00:18 Speaker_00
You're listening to a Morbid Network podcast.

00:00:24 Speaker_03
What a year it's been, you guys. I know that I have a lot to celebrate and a lot to give myself credit for.

00:00:29 Speaker_03
Honestly, the past few years have been pretty tough, especially for me and Elena, and it feels like a good time to step back and, you know, look at your life in this moment and commemorate it with something beautiful, something sparkly even.

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After drinking Cachava first thing in the morning, because that's when I always drink it, I feel satiated for hours. I feel focused, calm, and ready to take on my day.

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Something that I really love to do if I even want like a little bit more protein is just add a scoop of peanut butter to the vanilla and chai concoction that I make, and that, oh, is just scrum-diddly-umptious honey.

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00:03:01 Speaker_03
And I'm Alaina. And this is Morbid.

00:03:16 Speaker_02
This is morbid. It's morbid in the morning. It is. How are you over there, Gwirl? I'm good. You're swell? I'm swell. You have a nice sweater on today.

00:03:28 Speaker_04
I do. I have a sweater on. I have plaid pants on. Sweaterweather. Sweaterweather. Sweaterweather. It's nice, wetter weather over here. It's nice, wetter weather.

00:03:38 Speaker_03
I know we're hitting that nice November chilly, willy air. Yes, it's the time of year when my uniform is leggings, high socks, and a big old crew neck. It's the best time of year. It's the most wonderful time to be comfy.

00:03:54 Speaker_03
Precisely, that's how the song goes. Yeah, I feel moderately unhinged today. I like that, yeah. I think we all do. Who doesn't amongst us?

00:04:01 Speaker_04
Honestly.

00:04:02 Speaker_03
If you don't, there's the door. Shannon Bedore. Just kidding. I love Shannon Bedore. We have some exciting news to share with all of you guys. We are doing another culture fly box.

00:04:12 Speaker_03
If you remember, I believe it was last year that we did the last one and you guys loved those. So we said, honey, let's do another. Honey, why don't we do another one of those? So this one is very cool. It's available

00:04:24 Speaker_03
for pre-order right now on the Wondery shop. There is a t-shirt, there is a little pop socket, there's a little speaker. The speaker is so cute. The speaker is adorable. I love it. There's like little ear pods and there's an LED candle.

00:04:42 Speaker_03
So that's exciting. You can change the colors of it. It's a little, it's like cathedrally looking. It's very cool, the aesthetic. Aesthetic, yeah. Yeah, so that is available for pre-order right now on The Wondery Shop.

00:04:56 Speaker_03
And I think they're starting to ship out on December 6th. Yes. So, yeah, go get one of those. Which is the best month because I was born in that month. And we got Christmas, honey. But my birthday. And Hanukkah. My birthday. And your birthday. Of course.

00:05:12 Speaker_03
Everybody. Number one. Yay. He was number one. You won't get that because you don't watch Spongebob. Yeah, so I think that's all the bit nasty we got. You got anything to talk about?

00:05:29 Speaker_04
No, well this is just like a little side note. John and I watched Trap. the other night for fun. And how was that? I was watch trapped just for the fun. And how was that?

00:05:42 Speaker_04
I wasn't thinking everybody was being like totally truthful when they said that it was just a concert. But they were. It's a concert. It's a concert. It's a concert. It's like the- It's M. Night Shyamalan's daughter, who is like the- Oh, right.

00:05:58 Speaker_04
And here's the thing, she's great.

00:06:00 Speaker_03
Good voice?

00:06:00 Speaker_04
She's beautiful, amazing voice, she plays instruments and shit, like she's very talented.

00:06:05 Speaker_03
Fucking trifecta.

00:06:06 Speaker_04
Didn't sign up to watch her whole concert, though.

00:06:08 Speaker_03
No, didn't invite tickets to a concert, to your knowledge. It is a wily movie. John and I were like, was that a fever dream? I've heard some interesting reviews. It was crazy.

00:06:21 Speaker_03
My cousin went to see it in theaters, my cousin, your nephew, and he came back with not quite a rave review. Yeah, I was shocked.

00:06:29 Speaker_04
It was not a good movie. But it was one of those, like, that you just can laugh the whole time.

00:06:35 Speaker_03
Like, Emmy, what's going on? Remember The Village?

00:06:37 Speaker_04
That's the thing. He nails it a lot. But this was not one of those times. No. And that's okay. We can't all, you know, bet a thousand, I suppose.

00:06:47 Speaker_03
You cannot win them all.

00:06:48 Speaker_04
But I will say Josh Hartnett in it. Oh, honey, Josh Hartnett. He is a snack. Had he been given an actual character to play, he would have played it flawlessly.

00:06:59 Speaker_04
I could see when he had little moments of being able to play this scary serial killer, you were like, oh, you would have nailed that. He would have eaten it up.

00:07:10 Speaker_03
But he didn't get a lot. I just, whenever I think of him, I think of him in 30 Days of Night. Yeah, he's great in that. I love him in 30 Days of Night. That movie will literally make me sob. That movie. That's a great movie.

00:07:26 Speaker_03
We covered it on Scream like probably a few months ago at this point, maybe last year. I don't really know. Yeah, it was my pick, right? Yeah, it had to have been last year at this point because I think it was cold out when we covered it.

00:07:34 Speaker_04
Was it really?

00:07:35 Speaker_03
Yeah.

00:07:37 Speaker_04
But yeah, that's a great fucking movie. Josh Hartnett is great. Trap is not great, but go watch it for fun. Go watch it anyway. But yeah. And we just covered a good movie on Scream.

00:07:49 Speaker_03
Oh, such a good movie.

00:07:50 Speaker_04
If you're looking for something to listen to that's just kind of like lighthearted and fun. We covered Fresh on Scream.

00:07:57 Speaker_03
It was Asha's pick. That movie is so good. It came out in 2022. It only came out on Hulu. I feel like that movie should have had like a box office release.

00:08:06 Speaker_04
I feel like it should have a re-release, to be quite honest.

00:08:08 Speaker_03
I feel like it needs a theatrical release. That movie is fucking great.

00:08:12 Speaker_04
Especially right now, I'm like, damn, you guys should release that shit. It's one of those movies, I was shocked by how much I liked this movie. I mean, John watched it and he loved it too. I know, I was happy to hear that he also enjoyed it.

00:08:23 Speaker_03
Yeah, I had a feeling he would love it.

00:08:24 Speaker_04
But I'm telling you, if you guys have slept on Fresh.

00:08:27 Speaker_03
Wake up.

00:08:28 Speaker_04
Go watch Fresh and let's get it. I feel like it needs way more attention. Sebastian Stan in that movie, holy shit. Daisy, is it Edgers? Edgar Jones.

00:08:38 Speaker_03
Edgar Jones. Fucking phenomenal. Yeah. And I think it's Mimi Cave who directed it. Mimi Cave. I was like, holy shit, Mimi Cave. It was her directorial debut. Yeah, Mimi Cave. Blew my mind. Yeah, crazy.

00:08:50 Speaker_04
Blew my damn mind. So that's just, that's my, um, go watch one for fun and one because it's a fucking kick-ass movie.

00:08:56 Speaker_03
Oh, and then just really quickly, I think maybe I mentioned it briefly, but go watch Woman of the Hour. It was Anna Kendrick's directorial debut, and I thought that movie was really good. It's gotten great reviews. Yeah. I haven't seen it yet.

00:09:10 Speaker_03
Some people didn't quite enjoy it, but I really, really loved it. Really, I haven't watched it yet, so I won't tell you if I like it or not.

00:09:16 Speaker_04
Yeah, go watch it. I'm interested. Tell you that much. Yeah. All right.

00:09:19 Speaker_03
But yeah, that's just a little recommendations. Recommendation corner. Yeah. I love that. I love movies. Yeah. Even when they're not great. Oh my god. Wait. Hold on. Oh my god. Did I finally get this? Hold up. I think.

00:09:33 Speaker_03
Remember this morning I walked into you and I said, do you ever get one of those tiny little eyelashes in your eye and you can't find it and it just is stabbing you? I think I might have just got it.

00:09:42 Speaker_04
Look at you. Oh wow.

00:09:43 Speaker_03
That was a relief.

00:09:44 Speaker_04
You can see clearly now the lash is gone. Is she? Hold on.

00:09:51 Speaker_03
all it wasn't even it's on my fingernail now it was like a little tiny piece of hair the tiniest little piece sorry everybody that was really bothering me so let's get into it that was like og

00:10:03 Speaker_03
like yeah just trailing off leave it in let's get on with it though we've got a story to talk about today i found this case really interesting um and i think you will too i'm excited is this is unfortunately a murder it is the murder of cheryl purveyor but lots of moving pieces in this case

00:10:25 Speaker_03
And it starts a little before midnight on April 20th, 1968. A man named John Miller and his wife got home to the Castilian apartments in Burbank, California, parked their car.

00:10:35 Speaker_03
They were just going to walk, you know, from the car inside, finish their night.

00:10:39 Speaker_03
But as they were walking to their apartment, they noticed their neighbor, 22-year-old Cheryl Prevailer, sitting in her car with the engine running and the headlights still on. So they were like, what's going on with her over there?

00:10:51 Speaker_03
So they approached the car to go check on Cheryl, who they found sitting in the front seat, barely conscious, eyes closed, gasping for air, and bleeding heavily from her head and chest.

00:11:03 Speaker_03
So the Millers ran inside to call the police, who arrived a short time later. and as they waited for the paramedics, Mr. Miller looked at his watch and it was exactly 11 30 p.m.

00:11:14 Speaker_03
It turned out that Cheryl had been shot twice in the head just above her left ear and she also had one large wound across her chest

00:11:22 Speaker_03
which the coroner would later suspect happened when she actually tried to push the barrel of the gun away as it was fired.

00:11:29 Speaker_03
There were also seven half-inch gashes on her forehead and on the top of her head that were made by a blunt object, possibly like the butt of a pistol. So somebody was like beating her and had shot her multiple times.

00:11:43 Speaker_03
Her face and her head were absolutely covered with blood, which had also pooled in the driver's seat and on the floor of the car. So paramedics arrived to the scene.

00:11:52 Speaker_03
They rushed Cheryl to the Burbank Hospital, but the attention that she needed went way beyond the capabilities of Burbank Hospital.

00:11:59 Speaker_03
So they ended up having to transfer her to the Los Angeles County Hospital, but she unfortunately died as she was being prepped for surgery. She almost lived. Holy shit.

00:12:09 Speaker_03
Which I so I wish she had anyways but I so wish that she had because there is some unanswered questions when it comes to this case. Interesting.

00:12:18 Speaker_03
But by the time Detective Lieutenant Dave McIntyre arrived to the Castilian apartments the other residents of the building had all assembled into the parking lot to say like what the fuck was going on to see what was happening.

00:12:30 Speaker_03
Upon his first surveying of the scene, he noticed a .32-caliber automatic pistol lying on the passenger seat that didn't appear to have been fired. And inscribed on one side of the barrel was the word LOVE and the other PAUL.

00:12:44 Speaker_03
Which was a reference to Cheryl's husband of only seven weeks, Paul Purveyor. The gun was loaded with five rounds. Also on the front seat was Cheryl's purse, which had $35 in it, which today would be a little more than $300, which is fucking insane.

00:12:59 Speaker_03
Yeah. To think that $35 back then is worth $300 today. That's nuts.

00:13:04 Speaker_03
But on the floor of the driver's seat, investigators also discovered two .25 caliber shells, and outside the car toward the rear right tire, they found two unfired .25 caliber rounds as well.

00:13:18 Speaker_03
Now, this struck them as particularly strange because Cheryl had been shot from the left side of the vehicle, meaning that at some point her killer had stood by the other side of the car, probably reloading or loading the gun, which is just kind of strange.

00:13:32 Speaker_03
As far as McIntyre could tell, if this had been a robbery or even attempted carjacking, it had obviously gone terribly wrong. The shooter had not only left a ton of money in the car, but had also left the car itself, which was a really nice car.

00:13:46 Speaker_03
It was a 1968. So new yellow Jaguar worth obviously a lot of money. Yeah. And the other thing was the attack would have been really violent for an attempted robbery.

00:13:57 Speaker_03
Like if the killer was only trying to get away, any one of Cheryl's wounds that she sustained would have given them a sufficient opportunity to dip and like run out of the scene.

00:14:07 Speaker_03
So McIntyre and several other investigators fanned out across the lot to interview neighbors. And they started with John Miller. And John Miller was a part of the couple who had first found her.

00:14:17 Speaker_03
He explained that he and his wife had just got home, you know, walking to their apartment, and they saw Cheryl's car with the engine running, the radio playing, and the lights on. And actually, at first, they didn't think anybody was even in the car.

00:14:28 Speaker_03
I think they just heard the music and saw that the car was on. And the closer they got, he realized that Cheryl was in the front seat, and he was like, she was sitting in a really strange position.

00:14:37 Speaker_03
And then he said he could hear, he quote, terrible sound, a low guttural moan. Oh. Because she's like, I'm pretty sure, like choking on her own blood.

00:14:44 Speaker_04
Oh, that's awful.

00:14:45 Speaker_03
So after calling for help, he ran to another neighbor, Larry, I think it's Beauregard, his apartment and said, come and help. The girl in 17 has been beaten up real bad. And to his surprise, that neighbor responded by saying, you mean she's been shot?

00:14:59 Speaker_03
Which is like, I'm sorry, what? Why would you assume that? Well, when they questioned the other neighbors, investigators were quite surprised to learn that multiple neighbors heard gunshots, but not one of them called the police. What the fuck?

00:15:13 Speaker_03
Not one of them. We see this so often. It's crazy. Larry Beauregard explained that he'd been in his home, in his living room a little after 11 p.m. when he heard what he thought was a gunshot and then a few moments past and he heard two more.

00:15:26 Speaker_03
Because remember, she was shot three times. You hear three gunshots. Detectives presumed that the first shot caused the wound to Cheryl's chest and the other two gunshots were to her head.

00:15:37 Speaker_03
One of the neighbors looked out his window after hearing the shots as well and he said what he described as a man of average height and weight wearing a white hooded sweatshirt, but he never got a look at the person's face.

00:15:48 Speaker_03
Otherwise, no one had seen anything and the crime scene was not really offering much up for clues. So they were like, what, where do we start here?

00:15:56 Speaker_04
What is going on?

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00:18:09 Speaker_03
So while officers continued to speak with the residents of the Castilian apartments, which I guess you would never want to live amongst any of them. Can you imagine? Yeah. All of your neighbors are just like, well, I guess I was gunshot. Right.

00:18:21 Speaker_03
So while they did that, Lieutenants Ernest Vandergrift and Warren King went to the Prevailers apartment where they found Charles' husband, Paul. who would come home after getting a message from Mrs. Miller.

00:18:30 Speaker_03
The investigators found him to be in a state of shock, or at least stunned silence, as you would kind of expect in that situation. Paul said he actually gave his wife $50 that morning to go grocery shopping, and then he left for work.

00:18:43 Speaker_03
And he said later that night, about an hour before she was killed, Cheryl actually stopped into his bar in Sunderland where he was working and they had a drink together.

00:18:52 Speaker_03
They finished their drink, he said he walked her out to the car and then he went back inside and that was the last time he had seen her alive.

00:18:59 Speaker_03
Now these facts were confirmed with the other staff at the bar that evening and when they asked whether there was anybody who might want his wife dead, Paul said yes, that German fellow.

00:19:09 Speaker_03
referring to a man that Cheryl had dated before she and Paul got married. But he said other than that, he couldn't think of anybody else. Just one ex-boyfriend.

00:19:17 Speaker_03
So a quick background check on Cheryl revealed really nothing indicating that her life would be cut so tragically short. She was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1945. And she'd always been a strong-willed and determined girl.

00:19:29 Speaker_03
By all accounts, everybody loved Cheryl. Like, she didn't have an enemy on this earth. She was always a physically active child. She had a really strong interest in sports from an early age, and she actually carried that into adulthood.

00:19:41 Speaker_03
And when she graduated from high school, she wanted to move out to Los Angeles, hoping to break into the film industry. So at first when she moved out there, she tried her hand on an office job, but it just didn't hold her interest for long.

00:19:52 Speaker_03
And so she moved on and she answered an ad for a job as an aerobics instructor at the Aristocratic Spa. Damn, what a name. I know, I was like, the Aristocratic Spa. We're all aristocratic up in here. So she loved her job at the spa.

00:20:07 Speaker_03
She was also really, really good at it. She quickly got promoted first to assistant manager and then manager of another location. And a short time after moving to LA, she ended up meeting Paul, who, like I said, owned two bars in the city.

00:20:22 Speaker_03
He was charming, he was attentive, and it wasn't long before they fell in love and they actually got married pretty quickly. And then just seven months later, Cheryl was dead.

00:20:31 Speaker_04
Damn.

00:20:32 Speaker_03
So given that nothing appeared to be missing from the car, and Cheryl was still wearing all her expensive jewelry, investigators ruled out robbery pretty much immediately.

00:20:41 Speaker_03
But if it wasn't robbery, then that meant somebody had literally gone to the apartments that night just to kill Cheryl. Yeah, and like she doesn't have any enemies, so what the fuck? So who would that be?

00:20:51 Speaker_03
And by the look of things, her killer was not a professional. The brutality and the attack implied something personal, and the killer didn't stop until he was pretty certain that she wouldn't live.

00:21:02 Speaker_03
So as a matter of practice, investigators also ran a simple background check on Paul. And what came back was pretty fucking surprising. Paul had only purchased his two bars within the last two years.

00:21:14 Speaker_03
And before that, he had worked for a short time at an insurance industry, selling life insurance, which is interesting. And before that, he actually spent a number of years as an officer with the LAPD. So he was previously one of them. Oh. Yeah.

00:21:29 Speaker_03
It turned out that just a few years into his tenure with LAPD, Paul was discharged from his position after he helped a friend's roommate obtain an abortion, which was illegal at the time. Wow. Yeah.

00:21:41 Speaker_03
So although he wasn't disciplined for the illegal activity, he was let go from the position because they didn't want any kind of scandal or bad press.

00:21:49 Speaker_03
So his work history was pretty surprising to detectives, but even more surprising was his involvement in other crimes, serious crimes, including murder. Oh. Yeah. That's a serious crime. One of the most serious, I would say.

00:22:04 Speaker_03
On December 11, 1966, the Los Angeles Fire Department responded to a call about a house fire in the neighborhood of El Sereno. And when firefighters arrived, the back of the house was completely engulfed in flames.

00:22:17 Speaker_03
So they immediately began searching the house for survivors and found in the front room the body of 27-year-old Marlon Cromwell, the owner of the house. Now initially, firefighters assumed that he had either passed out or died from smoke inhalation.

00:22:31 Speaker_03
But when they got closer to his body, they discovered that he had actually been shot three times in the head and two times in the chest. So shot five times and then his house is on fire. Besides the body- Seems suspicious.

00:22:44 Speaker_03
Seems pretty fucking suspicious. Beside the body, they also discovered a towel with a ring of blood on it, which investigators would later theorize had been used kind of as like an informal silencer for the gun. Holy shit.

00:22:57 Speaker_03
Now, according to fire officials, there was no reason to believe that his death was a suicide because you're not going to shoot your own self five times, no.

00:23:05 Speaker_03
And the case was being invested as a homicide, but there was very little evidence at the scene to develop any leads from.

00:23:12 Speaker_03
So investigators theorized that the killer obviously set the fire to destroy any evidence of murder, but they had set the fire in the back room, which gave firefighters enough time to reach Cromwell's body before it was affected by the flames.

00:23:26 Speaker_03
An autopsy showed that he'd been shot three times in the head at close range, killing him. And then it seemed as though the killer must have stood several feet away and fired two more rounds into his chest to make sure he was completely expired.

00:23:38 Speaker_04
This is so chaotic. It is, immediately. I just realized how many times I've been like, damn. And I'm like, it's just like shocking.

00:23:45 Speaker_03
But rightfully so. The dams are up.

00:23:47 Speaker_04
The dams just keep on coming. But I'm like, wow, it's the only thing I'm like, this is so camping.

00:23:52 Speaker_03
You know what? They're not going to stop coming. Holy shit. Just live in a place of dam. You're a beaver now. Yeah. You be beaver. You are beaver. So, like Cheryl, everybody who knew Marlon Cromwell insisted he didn't have any enemies in life.

00:24:09 Speaker_03
Everybody loved him. What the fuck is going on? He was just a pretty regular dude. He worked as a stock clerk at a local grocery store, which he'd done since graduating high school. And otherwise, he was a really shy, quiet guy. That's sad. Yeah.

00:24:22 Speaker_03
At the time of his death, he was married to Christina Cromwell, and they had one child together. But on the day of the fire, Christina and their son were visiting Christina's mother like 150 miles away, luckily. Oh. Yeah.

00:24:36 Speaker_03
I mean, I'm glad they weren't there. Me too. So she seemed like an unlikely suspect, you know, but they weren't willing to rule her out entirely because they said, huh, that's crazy.

00:24:45 Speaker_04
That's suspicious.

00:24:46 Speaker_03
Is that interesting? Now, there were things about Marlon and Christina's relationship that also struck investigators as particularly odd.

00:24:53 Speaker_03
For one thing, they had been married for a number of years, but they got divorced and then remarried just a few months before the fire. Oh. Yeah.

00:25:02 Speaker_03
And just as interesting, two months before Marlon was killed, Christina had taken out a life insurance policy in his name in the amount of $75,000.

00:25:12 Speaker_04
You know? Damn. Damn. Wow.

00:25:17 Speaker_03
Yeah. Yeah. Just damn. Just damn. Wow. Okay. So a quick check of Christina's background revealed that she and Paul Prevailer just so happened to have been working together at the same insurance company at the time. Oh no. Yeah.

00:25:33 Speaker_04
I see where this is going.

00:25:34 Speaker_03
Yeah. Paul and Christina's workplace behavior led many of their coworkers to assume that they were carrying on a spicy affair.

00:25:42 Speaker_04
Oh no, then go the fuck away.

00:25:45 Speaker_03
Yeah, just together. Just leave. Go away. Run away together. It's shitty, but it's much less shitty than killing people.

00:25:52 Speaker_04
Because everyone will be fine without ya, but just move on.

00:25:55 Speaker_03
Well, while interviewing those coworkers, detectives learned that not too long ago, Christina had undergone a pretty serious makeover, during which she lost 75 pounds, dyed her hair blonde, got contact lenses, and capped her teeth.

00:26:09 Speaker_03
So she like, she went for it. Yeah. It was like a makeover scene in Clueless. Holy shit. Yeah, the remarkable transformation they insisted had been quote unquote coached by Paul, who seemed to have quite a lot of control over Christina. Ew.

00:26:24 Speaker_03
Yeah, Paul's an asshole. Ew. Detectives interviewed asshole Paul, who admitted that he had gone on a few dates with Christina, but he claimed there was really nothing more to their relationship than that.

00:26:35 Speaker_03
never really serious, but she capped her teeth for you. And also, you guys are married.

00:26:41 Speaker_04
Yeah. He's just sitting there being like, yeah, we went on a few dates. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait, no, no, no, they're not married.

00:26:46 Speaker_03
I thought they were married. Christina and Paul, no. No, I mean married to other people. Yeah. Oh, they're married to other people. That's what I mean. Like she's sitting there. I'm like, why is this not hitting you the way it's hitting me?

00:26:57 Speaker_03
I was like, wait, no, they're not married. I thought you thought they were married to each other.

00:27:00 Speaker_04
They are married to other people. And he is being like, we went on a few dates. Like that's something you do when you're married to other people. And it's like, no, no, babe, you're there's spouses, spouses. You're you can't.

00:27:12 Speaker_04
you can't just go on a date like he's like it's very much against the rules of being a spouse.

00:27:17 Speaker_04
Blowing past the whole like just yeah we went on a few dates but like I wasn't serious I'm not even worried about if it's serious or not you went on a date yeah What the fuck? Everyone's so fucking, everyone's so cavalier.

00:27:31 Speaker_03
They really are. Damn. I told you, you are a beaver. So detectives couldn't help feeling that Paul was not telling the entire truth. They were like, interesting. They were like, Damn! I said damn, Paul!

00:27:46 Speaker_03
So they actually assigned an officer to track Paul and Christina's movements, and two days later, when Christina got the first payout from Marlon's insurance, the detail followed them to Las Vegas where they checked into an expensive hotel together, racked up a very large bill, and in the six weeks that followed, Christina received $25,000 from the life insurance company,

00:28:08 Speaker_03
and transferred all of that money to Paul in a series of seven transfers, even though their relationship wasn't super serious.

00:28:17 Speaker_04
There's a lot of lying happening here, and bad lying.

00:28:22 Speaker_03
Lying is going to get caught. Cheryl is still alive, and guess what, everybody? Paul doesn't even know Cheryl at this point. Paul's married to another woman at this point. Oh my god. Because, correct, he is married.

00:28:32 Speaker_03
Sorry, I should have said that when you brought that point up. I'm shooketh. He is married, but not to Cheryl. Just to another woman. Yeah, we'll get there. So he's been at it for a long time. Oh, Paul stays at it.

00:28:44 Speaker_03
But yeah, so seven months later, Paul used that money to purchase his first bar in Burbank, which he named the Grand Dutch.

00:28:51 Speaker_03
Now, based on their investigation, detectives in the Cromwell case theorized that following her makeover, Christina divorced Marlon and started her relationship with Paul, only to rebury Mr. Cromwell less than a year later in order to arrange for his murder and to cash out on that life insurance policy.

00:29:09 Speaker_03
Cool. Is it cash out or cash in? I feel like, do both work? I think you can use both. Yeah. I would say both is fine. Thanks.

00:29:17 Speaker_03
Well, unfortunately, all the evidence they had was circumstantial, and there was really no way for them to prove that either Christina or Paul was involved in the death. It just kind of looked like it. Yeah.

00:29:26 Speaker_03
According to author Ken Hurwitz, it appeared to the district attorney that even though they were the likely ones to commit this murder, it was best to wait and hope that more evidence would arrive. Yeah. And boy, did it. Because remember.

00:29:38 Speaker_03
It's just best to wait. It's just best to wait. They probably did it, but like, let's wait for more evidence. And like, yeah, it's like, OK.

00:29:46 Speaker_03
Now, after learning of Paul Previller's connection to the death of Marlon Cromwell, detectives who were investigating Cheryl's death looked for an insurance policy taken out in Cheryl's name, and they found that just a few months before her death, Paul started a policy with a $25,000 payout.

00:30:03 Speaker_03
Eek. And this policy also had a double indemnity clause, meaning it would pay double in the unlikely event of an accidental death or murder. Oh, no.

00:30:14 Speaker_03
I feel like insurance companies need to not advertise this and just have it be a happy surprise in the midst of a tragedy.

00:30:21 Speaker_04
That's what I think. It's like, you know, like it's really sad. Everybody's upset. We're going through grief. And oh, here's a little silver lining. Guess what? You get more. You got the good insurance.

00:30:33 Speaker_04
that ahead of time so we can be sure that you didn't take that into consideration when all this was going on.

00:30:39 Speaker_03
Exactly. Well, while investigators continued to pursue the insurance angle, two detectives paid a visit to Paul's first wife, Layla, hoping to learn what kind of husband Paul had been to her or anything interesting about his past. Oh, come on, Layla.

00:30:55 Speaker_03
Lay it on us. Layla had never met Cheryl and actually didn't even know she existed when the detectives informed her of her death.

00:31:02 Speaker_03
And when they told Layla that Cheryl had been killed, she started trembling and, quote, could not get her hands to be steady. She was, like, freaking out.

00:31:11 Speaker_04
Oh.

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00:32:27 Speaker_03
She told the Burbank detectives that her marriage to Paul had started out like most marriages do. He was romantic, attentive, they seemed genuinely happy to be married, he seemed happy. They did have money trouble from the early days.

00:32:39 Speaker_03
Former girlfriend Morgan St. James said, money had always been important to Paul. He wanted things that were far beyond his reach. And according to Layla, it was important to Paul that people see him as successful, which he defined in financial terms.

00:32:55 Speaker_03
He even made it a point to inform everybody he met that his cousin, Stanley Kubrick, was a wildly successful film director, hoping they would associate him with Kubrick's success. I'm sorry. What? Wait, wait, wait. You got to say it. Damn. What?

00:33:13 Speaker_03
I told you. I told you this is quite an interesting case. I had no idea Stanley Kubrick was going to make an appearance here. I don't think Stanley Kubrick did either. I didn't know. Yeah. I don't think he had any intention of making it.

00:33:24 Speaker_03
I think Stanley said, keep me out of this. He said, I'm going to go make an art film. Bye. Yeah. What? Yeah. Wow. Yeah. However, Paul was nothing like his cousin. It doesn't sound like it. No. It doesn't sound like it.

00:33:36 Speaker_03
In fact, after being fired from the LAPD, he seemed to just move from one scheme to the other, just blowing his and Leila's money along the way. Wow. On like frivolous shit.

00:33:44 Speaker_03
Shortly after their wedding, that was when Leila noticed a big shift in Paul's personality. She said he became volatile and moody. He would just ignore her.

00:33:53 Speaker_03
Instead, he would choose to stay up late watching old movies and clean his guns, like instead of interacting with her at all. That's a no for me. Yeah. His indifference to Layla soon turned to anger and violence.

00:34:04 Speaker_03
And I just want to give a trigger warning for like domestic abuse here. This is a pretty rough one.

00:34:10 Speaker_03
In fact, Layla reacted so physically to the news of Cheryl's death basically because there were so many occasions where she believed that Paul was actually going to kill her. Oh, that's awful. Yeah.

00:34:21 Speaker_03
One afternoon, just about a year into their marriage, she went out for a few hours. And when she got home, she found that Paul was extremely drunk and he was pissed about something, like enraged.

00:34:32 Speaker_03
Before she could even open the driver's side door, Paul yanked the door open and was on top of her, punching her in the face over and over and screaming at her, I'm going to kill you. Whoa.

00:34:43 Speaker_03
He then dragged her out of the car and started beating her head against the side of the car to the point where she lost consciousness. And he only stopped when he saw another car approaching.

00:34:54 Speaker_03
She ended up being hospitalized for several days with very, very severe injuries to her head and face. But she declined to press charges because she was afraid of Paul still, obviously. So he never faced any kind of consequences for the assault. Wow.

00:35:07 Speaker_03
Yeah, that's horrifying. Horrifying. Now his attack on Leila seemed to come out of absolutely nowhere, but it was just the beginning of a series of events that caused her to be absolutely terrified of her husband.

00:35:20 Speaker_03
A month or so after the attack in the car, Leila suffered two serious hit-and-runs, like one after the other, that left her really badly injured, but luckily still alive.

00:35:30 Speaker_03
In one of the incidents, she recalled the driver stopping after he hit her car and looking at her in the rearview mirror, but she could only see his eyes, so she couldn't identify him.

00:35:40 Speaker_03
Now, despite not seeing the driver either time, she believed the hit-and-run incidents had definitely been orchestrated by Paul, in an effort to get rid of her.

00:35:48 Speaker_03
And in each case, there was also an insurance policy that paid out $5,000 after each incident. So they got $10,000, or I really should say Paul did. When asked why, if she believed he was trying to kill her, did she stay with Paul for so long?

00:36:03 Speaker_03
She explained that she believed if she tried to leave, he would kill her at that point. Yeah. That must be terrifying. Yeah, of course. And as we know, that is the most dangerous time to leave an abusive partner.

00:36:13 Speaker_03
And in the end, it turned out that the fear that made her stay was actually also the thing that finally convinced her to leave, Paul.

00:36:19 Speaker_04
Good.

00:36:20 Speaker_03
Just a few weeks after that second hit and run, Paul convinced Layla to join him for a day in the mountains. And he said, you know, we'll do some target shooting. So she reluctantly agreed to go with him. Oh, I don't like that. I know.

00:36:30 Speaker_03
She reluctantly agreed to go. But when they got into the woods, Paul just paced around for a while and never fired a shot, and then decided it was time to go home.

00:36:42 Speaker_04
No, I don't like that at all.

00:36:44 Speaker_03
So at that point, that sounds like he had intentions and he lost his nerve. And that's exactly what Layla thought. I hate that. said she knew, she believed that he fully intended to kill her that day. Oh, that's horrifying.

00:36:58 Speaker_03
And she knew that if she didn't leave him, it would just be a matter of days before he did get the confidence to do it.

00:37:04 Speaker_03
So it was also around this time that she learned of Paul's relationship with Christina Cromwell, which the courts would have deemed a justifiable reason to dissolve the marriage. So she took that opportunity and she divorced Paul.

00:37:15 Speaker_03
But also, another thing to think about here is she had to have a reason to divorce, like a justifiable reason. She couldn't just be like, I don't want to be in this relationship anymore. Yeah. Like what? Dumb.

00:37:27 Speaker_03
So hearing Layla's descriptions of the abuse she suffered at the hands of her ex-husband Paul was, as far as the detectives were concerned, only further evidence of a pattern of behavior that had probably led to the death of his current wife, Cheryl.

00:37:39 Speaker_03
But the problem was they couldn't prove that he had anything to do with Cheryl's death.

00:37:43 Speaker_03
According to Ken Hurwitz, Paul walked Cheryl Prevailer out to the car on the night of the murder, but his employees had never said that he left the bar for enough time to physically get to the apartment, commit the murder, and get back.

00:37:54 Speaker_03
So he hadn't done this.

00:37:56 Speaker_04
Jesus.

00:37:57 Speaker_03
Physical evidence of Paul's involvement was obviously hard to come by, but the circumstantial evidence was just piling up.

00:38:02 Speaker_04
Yeah.

00:38:04 Speaker_03
Ten days after Cheryl's murder, investigators sat down with Paul's co-worker, and pretty much the closest thing he had to a friend, a guy named Alan Halverson.

00:38:13 Speaker_03
They had actually worked together at the insurance company, and Halverson was drawn to Paul's charisma and exciting lifestyle.

00:38:19 Speaker_03
But the more time he spent with Paul, the more he started to see a side of Paul that few others had ever seen, save for his ex-wife Layla.

00:38:28 Speaker_03
At first, Alan was evasive and pretty much seemed to be protecting Paul, telling investigators that he just knew how much Paul loved Cheryl and how he would never do anything to hurt her.

00:38:38 Speaker_03
But the detectives, specifically one detective named Detective King, could tell that Halverson was an empathetic person and didn't seem accustomed to lying, so he just kept pushing until Halverson finally caved.

00:38:50 Speaker_03
After taking a deep breath, he looked at the detectives and said he was afraid of Paul after everything he had seen and heard.

00:38:56 Speaker_04
Oh, man.

00:38:57 Speaker_03
According to him, Paul wasn't just involved in the attempted murders of Layla, but also several local robberies and the death of Marlon Cromwell. And he knew this all for fact. Holy shit.

00:39:08 Speaker_03
Halverson said the two men had been out at a bar drinking together and had become quite drunk, and Paul confessed that he'd killed Marlon Cromwell.

00:39:16 Speaker_03
Halverson said he made the remark that, quote, I killed her husband, referring to Christina Cromwell's husband. Wow. So the detectives could tell there was more than just fear motivating Alan Halverson's silence.

00:39:27 Speaker_03
Like Layla, Alan also believed that Paul would kill him if he ever said anything about the murder confession or his knowledge of the other crimes. But at the same time, he was embarrassed and ashamed for not giving the police this information sooner.

00:39:41 Speaker_03
Yeah. He told Detective King, don't ask me why I continued working for him. I can't give you a logical explanation of why I did it.

00:39:48 Speaker_03
So at 6.45 p.m., four Los Angeles police officers armed with shotguns entered the Grand Duke Bar and announced that they were placing Paul under arrest for the murders of Marlon Cromwell and Cheryl Purveyor. Wow. Wow.

00:40:02 Speaker_03
And the attempted murder of his ex-wife, Layla Prevailer. Oh, shit. And as they placed Paul in handcuffs and escorted him out of the car, he said, don't you guys ever give up? He was just like, ugh. Like, he's just like, oh my God. Like, wow. Wow.

00:40:18 Speaker_03
Shortly after midnight, a second team of officers caught up with Christina Cromwell at the apartment she shared with her sister and placed her under arrest for the murder of her husband.

00:40:28 Speaker_03
Now, the evidence against Paul and Christina was pretty much almost entirely circumstantial, but there was a lot of it.

00:40:34 Speaker_03
And the prosecutor from the district attorney's office, Vincent Bugliosi, decided to take a chance of what evidence they did have would be compelling enough for a jury.

00:40:45 Speaker_03
When the news hit the papers the next day, the press couldn't help but draw comparisons to the popular film Double Indemnity, where a wealthy woman seduces an insurance agent and convinces him to kill her husband. Oh, shit. It's very similar.

00:40:57 Speaker_04
I love when they're like, we can't help but look at this and say...

00:41:00 Speaker_03
It's the same. It is what it is. It's a movie. Yeah, the United Press International described the case as the late show come to life. Wow. Saying that the Prevailer case, quote, does double indemnity, one better.

00:41:12 Speaker_03
I'm like, okay guys, people died here in real life. This is getting wild. Yeah, it's like, this is literal, this is real people. Yeah. It's not a movie script. These are not actors.

00:41:21 Speaker_03
But the other aspects of the case were too good, too salacious to be ignored as far as the press was involved.

00:41:26 Speaker_03
Paul's previous employment as an LAPD officer, rumors of illegal abortions, and of course, his ongoing affair with Christina Cromwell, which had motivated most of the crimes.

00:41:35 Speaker_03
I'm like, I don't really know if it was his affair so much as it was the money, but yeah, it was a piece of it. So on May 2nd, Paul and Christina were both formally charged and arraigned a short time later in district court.

00:41:48 Speaker_03
The judge, Joan Dempsley Klain, denied bail for both of them and remanded them to the custody of the county pending a preliminary hearing.

00:41:56 Speaker_03
On May 14th, Bugliosi took the case to the grand jury with a simple case, like we said, built on circumstantial evidence.

00:42:03 Speaker_03
The prosecutor alleged that Paul Prevailer and Christina Cromwell had been carrying on an extramarital affair for years and that they had conspired to kill Layla Prevailer in order to cash in on her life insurance policy.

00:42:15 Speaker_03
And when that plan failed, they devised a new strategy, this time targeting Marlon Cromwell. And when those insurance funds were beginning to run out, they targeted Paul's new wife, Cheryl Prevailer.

00:42:29 Speaker_03
imagine being this ruthless of a human being when you sit there and you wonder like did he just plan to kill her all along because they were married for seven months that's the thing and it's like so he's dating christina but and at the same time is he just hunting for a woman to kill to marry and kill yeah that's the thing was there ever any love there like did he pick her specifically because he was like oh i can kill her right

00:42:53 Speaker_03
And who killed her? Who did it, actually? Who pulled the trigger? Holy shit.

00:42:59 Speaker_03
Now, Bugliosi, like we just said, couldn't connect either of the accused to the murders directly, but the circumstantial evidence, more than 30 witness statements, and multiple bank transfers were compelling enough for the grand jury to return indictments on all charges.

00:43:13 Speaker_03
It was actually really unusual for a jury to indict without knowing the identity of the actual killer, but Bugliosi's strategy emphasized that, quote, those responsible for the murder stood to profit from insurance policies on the victim's lives, and thus they should be held equally as responsible as whoever did commit the murders.

00:43:31 Speaker_03
Yeah. On all counts, Paul and Christina pleaded not guilty. Lies. Yeah.

00:43:36 Speaker_03
Now, a trial date was set for November, and in the meantime, lawyers for Paul and Christina started petitioning the court to have the trial separated, arguing that it would be prejudicial for Christina to be tried with Paul, quote, because the greater number of counts against him.

00:43:52 Speaker_03
Superior Judge Pierce Young listened to both sides, but ultimately denied that motion to sever the trials. He said, nope. He locked those two in as co-defendants.

00:44:01 Speaker_03
And to make matters worse for them, after Judge Young's decision, the prosecutor's office announced that they'd be seeking the death penalty.

00:44:08 Speaker_04
I mean, honestly, and again, if you've listened to this, you know our stances on the whole thing. Yeah, we're gray. like it's super gray but I lean more towards being against it.

00:44:18 Speaker_04
If there's if there's a case where you it makes sense that they're going for it, this makes sense.

00:44:24 Speaker_03
Like I can see why they were going for it here. Yeah, same. So Paul and Christina's trial began on November 18, 1968, which is weird because today is November 19th.

00:44:35 Speaker_03
which is the very next day, but we were actually originally slated to record this yesterday. That is weird. And that happens a lot. That's the thing. It's something that happens so often.

00:44:44 Speaker_03
But so yes, years later, prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi would make a name for himself as the prosecutor in the case against the Manson family. Say it, say it, say it, say it. Damn. That's crazy though. And subsequently as an author like yourself.

00:45:03 Speaker_03
Oh my god, there's some big players in this. I know. But at the time, because this all happened before that, he was young and pretty relatively inexperienced as a prosecutor thus far.

00:45:12 Speaker_04
He was green.

00:45:13 Speaker_03
He was green. So those two facts left many people wondering if he was the right person for the job. People were like, I don't know if this case is going to go like we want it to.

00:45:22 Speaker_03
But when it came time for those opening arguments, everybody was about to have egg on they face. A big disgrace. Yes. I don't know the rest of the words. Something all over the place. But years later. Something all over the place. Right?

00:45:37 Speaker_03
Kicking your can all over the place. Is it kicking your can?

00:45:41 Speaker_04
You got mud on your face. A big disgrace.

00:45:45 Speaker_03
Kicking your can all over the place. Why does that feel wrong? I don't know. I guess your can is your butt.

00:45:52 Speaker_04
Yeah.

00:45:52 Speaker_03
I'm looking it up. I like that.

00:45:54 Speaker_04
Yeah, we were right. Okay, I second-guessed myself. I need to stop doing that.

00:45:57 Speaker_03
I second-guessed myself too.

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00:47:01 Speaker_03
Well, years later, Bugliosi himself would write, I sometimes wave an opening statement, feeling that it takes the edge off my witness's testimony when the jury has already heard the story from me.

00:47:10 Speaker_03
But in this case, he understood that the timeline was long and pretty complicated. The evidence was not always explicit in its importance, and the killer was still unknown.

00:47:19 Speaker_03
So he decided to take some time to clarify these finer points of the case and told the jury that the deaths of Marlon Cromwell and Cheryl Prevailer had, quote, all the earmarks of planned executions. He continued saying,

00:47:31 Speaker_03
We intend to prove by very strong circumstantial evidence that Paul Purveyor was responsible for the murder of his wife, Cheryl. Emphasizing the word responsible to mean it was him who set things in motion.

00:47:42 Speaker_03
Not necessarily pulled the trigger, but he is responsible here. Interesting. So lawyers for the defense, on the other hand, they actually chose to waive their opening statements, which I didn't know was an option. I also didn't. Actually, maybe I did.

00:47:57 Speaker_03
Yeah, I feel like it's not something that really pops up in our cases at all.

00:48:00 Speaker_04
Yeah, I think I knew that it was a thing. It just, it really doesn't pop up in our cases a lot.

00:48:03 Speaker_03
Yeah, I didn't know you could.

00:48:05 Speaker_04
I can't even think of one, to be honest.

00:48:06 Speaker_03
But with more than a hundred witnesses called and a large amount of complicated evidence, the trial dragged on for almost three months.

00:48:12 Speaker_03
So during this time, most of the public's attention was focused on Paul and Christina's behavior in the courtroom, which many people found to be in poor taste. Paul's former girlfriend Morgan St.

00:48:21 Speaker_03
James said Paul was flirting and winking with the court reporter and Christina showed up in a mini skirt. What? Yeah, not really either things you want to be doing while you're on trial for murder. Probably not.

00:48:32 Speaker_03
But despite the distractions, Bugliosi stayed mostly focused on what evidence he could show to the jury to convince them of Paul's guilt.

00:48:39 Speaker_03
He wasn't able to prove Paul pulled the trigger in either case, obviously, but he was able to show the bank transfers that happened shortly after each murder occurred and the policy started paying out.

00:48:49 Speaker_03
And it was the timing of the murders and the transfers more than anything else that really seemed to get through to the jury, because that's hard to argue. It is. Like you got numbers in front of you. Yeah.

00:49:00 Speaker_03
But regardless of who actually committed the murders, the quick transfer of funds, seven in total, was, according to Bugliosi, evidence that neither murder would have occurred without Paul's orchestration. Exactly.

00:49:12 Speaker_03
Now, if his strategy was focused and simple, intended to make sense to anybody on the jury, the defense had different ideas about how they should proceed.

00:49:20 Speaker_03
Rather than attempt to refute the prosecution's evidence and witness statements or anything like that, lawyers for Paul and Christina attempted to place blame on each other because they each had their own set of lawyers. There it is.

00:49:31 Speaker_03
I was waiting for that. Yeah. Paul's lawyer, Mel Album, argued that Christina had orchestrated both murders in order to have Paul alter herself. Oh.

00:49:40 Speaker_03
And her lawyer argued that Christina was just another victim who'd been manipulated by Paul, which is kind of believable. Yeah, absolutely. Now, on February 15th, Bugliosi gave his closing remarks.

00:49:51 Speaker_03
He summarized the case for the jury as just a simple matter of murder for profit and criticized the defense for, quote, throwing up a smokescreen around the facts of the case in order to escape into the darkness of reasonable doubt, which is poetic.

00:50:04 Speaker_04
Yeah. And correct. Escape into the darkness. Yeah, I love it. If you listen to the re-watcher, it made me immediately think of Into the Darkness. Into the Darkness. Go listen to the re-watcher.

00:50:14 Speaker_03
Go listen to that show. It's great. Mel Allblom, meanwhile, tried to place blame on the prosecution's main witness. You might remember one, Alan Halverson. Oh, I do. And he argued that it was actually Halverson who had killed Cheryl. Oh. Not true.

00:50:29 Speaker_03
But after closing statements were given, the jury retired for deliberation. On February 18th, after three days of deliberation, they returned to announce that they found Paul Prevailer guilty on two counts of first degree murder. Wow.

00:50:42 Speaker_03
And guilty on one count of attempted murder.

00:50:45 Speaker_04
Wow.

00:50:46 Speaker_03
Yeah, so they found him guilty across the board.

00:50:48 Speaker_04
Damn.

00:50:48 Speaker_03
And they found Christina Cromwell guilty of one count of first-degree murder as well.

00:50:53 Speaker_03
Vincent Bugliosi's case had been very complicated, as we know, very circumstantial, but in the end, he was able to convince that jury that each defendant had played essential roles in the deaths of their spouses.

00:51:05 Speaker_03
even if they didn't do the killing themselves. That's very, very interesting.

00:51:09 Speaker_04
Yeah, and as a green prosecutor at the time. That's the thing, like, that's very fascinating. And, I mean, he must have been very persuasive.

00:51:17 Speaker_03
Oh, yeah.

00:51:18 Speaker_04
With such a circumstantial case. Yep. To be, for beyond a reasonable doubt.

00:51:23 Speaker_03
I think, I think those transfers, damn, we should just name this episode, damn. I think those transfers really spoke for themselves and the fact that they

00:51:32 Speaker_03
There are, you know, two deaths here and there's a time between them, very specific, and those transfers align so perfectly, like in conjunction to that timeline, you know what I mean?

00:51:46 Speaker_03
So Paul and Christina were back in court for sentencing on February 24th, 1969. Bugliosi followed through on his earlier statements and asked the jury to sentence each of them to death for their roles in the murders.

00:51:58 Speaker_03
He told the jury to Paul Prevaler, the taking of a human life is like taking a drink of water. That's scary. That hits.

00:52:05 Speaker_03
Christina's attorney David Kogas argued that his client was quote not an equal partner in the slaying of Cromwell and that she went along with the crime only because she was under prevailer Svengali influence. Wow. Yeah. Pulling out the Svengali. I know.

00:52:19 Speaker_03
I had to look that up. The following day, February 26, the jury announced their decisions for her role in the murder of her husband. Christina Cromwell was sentenced to life in prison, but she did get the eligibility for parole after seven years.

00:52:33 Speaker_04
Oh, whenever you hear life in prison, and then you're like, but after seven years, you can probably get out. It's like, what is that?

00:52:40 Speaker_03
Yeah. Like, what a weird, conflicting statement. The rest of your life, unless you can reach the heart of the parole board in seven years. Like, wow. As for Paul Prevailer, though? they sentenced him to death in the gas chamber. Wow. Yes.

00:52:55 Speaker_03
Which is honestly, you have to think about how remarkable that is because- That is remarkable. Everybody on that jury sat there knowing that he did not actively kill Cheryl and did not, I mean, we don't know if he actively killed them.

00:53:09 Speaker_04
But they could not technically prove that he had a actual physical hand in the act itself.

00:53:16 Speaker_03
Right. But to sentence him to death even still is, Interesting. Interesting. That's the thing. This is an interesting case. Yeah. But when asked for comment on the sentences, Paul told reporters it was the sentence he'd been hoping for.

00:53:29 Speaker_03
He said, I don't want to spend the rest of my life in prison. Whoa. So it was just like one final jackass. It's him being like, you know what? I wanted that. I wanted that actually. So thanks. Like, okay, you petulant fucking child.

00:53:41 Speaker_03
But for those most affected by the trial, the verdicts and sentences came as obviously a significant relief.

00:53:46 Speaker_03
Alan Halverson and Leila Prevailer, the state's two most important witnesses, actually started spending a lot of time together during the trial. Shut up. And they eventually got married.

00:53:56 Speaker_04
Oh, my God.

00:53:57 Speaker_03
Because they had the bond over like this very unusual shared experience. Wow. Isn't that awesome? I hope they had a lovely life. It sounds like they did. Oh, good. Yeah, you know.

00:54:08 Speaker_03
And in 1972, as you might remember, well, not saying you were alive, but... Wow. That's not what I was saying, just because it's come up a lot.

00:54:15 Speaker_03
California repealed the death penalty, and all death row inmates had their sentences commuted to life in prison. We've seen that. Which, honestly, is actually hilarious to me that he was like, I wanted to go to the gas chamber.

00:54:28 Speaker_03
And the state was like, oh, psych! You thought! Only a few years later, too. So this meant that Paul, who had been sentenced, like we just said, to die in prison, was now eligible for parole, though, as early as 1984. Forgot about that.

00:54:42 Speaker_03
So in response to that... I also was not alive then either. She wasn't. No. Just... You were like on your way though. No. I'm at the end of the next year. I wasn't on my way. I don't know how it all works.

00:54:55 Speaker_02
No way.

00:54:55 Speaker_03
They were thinking about you. Actually, they weren't. You were surprised. No. I was going to say they didn't. Actually, you were. You were the stomach flu. But in response to that change, Leila Halvorson, Halvorson now, Oh, look at that.

00:55:06 Speaker_03
And California Assemblyman Patrick Nolan started lobbying very hard to keep Paul, who they described as a cold calculating killer, in prison for the rest of his life. Yeah, I get that.

00:55:16 Speaker_03
They said, we're asking everyone to join us with requesting that the Board of Prison Term reopen the Prevailer case and revoke his parole in light of the cold blooded crimes committed by him. Yeah.

00:55:26 Speaker_03
And it turned out that they were not alone in their quest. They also had the support of the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office.

00:55:33 Speaker_03
In a statement to reporters, Deputy District Attorney Steve Sauter said, Prevailer is performing on paper like a model prisoner, but he himself did not believe that Paul had genuinely reformed in any way. Yeah.

00:55:44 Speaker_03
And openly supported the Halverson's case. So in 1976, Christina Cromwell was actually paroled from prison. Oh, I knew you were going to tell me that. She did not spend a lot of time in there.

00:55:55 Speaker_03
In the years that followed, though, she did become a key witness in the district attorney's efforts to keep Paul behind bars whenever he became eligible for parole. Yeah. I mean, what else are you going to do?

00:56:07 Speaker_03
At a parole hearing in 1986 when Elena was alive, Christina Cromwell testified for nearly four hours.

00:56:14 Speaker_03
And during that time, she told the board that in 1966, this is crazy, Paul had given his parents a trip to Mexico as an anniversary party, but then tried to have his parents murdered as they traveled between Tijuana and Ensenada.

00:56:31 Speaker_03
I'm sorry, he tried to have his, he tried to kill his own parents? Paul's father was shot in the face during the attack, but was unable to identify the shooter and the case went cold.

00:56:43 Speaker_04
Oh this guy's a fucking monster, he was going way far back.

00:56:48 Speaker_03
His parents' anniversary. He was gonna have them killed and cash in on the money. Holy shit. Yeah, he's a... He's a fucking... Cold-blooded. Yeah.

00:56:56 Speaker_03
But at the time, it was also revealed that during the attack on Layla, where Paul beat her brutally, Christina was in the car waiting nearby to help Paul flee the scene.

00:57:05 Speaker_04
Oh, fucker.

00:57:06 Speaker_03
Which I'm like, yeah.

00:57:07 Speaker_04
Yeah, that's fucked up. Yeah.

00:57:10 Speaker_03
Now, all of Paul's subsequent... Oh my God, that's awful. It is awful. All of Paul's subsequent bids for parole have been denied and he remains in prison to this day at Mule Creek Correctional Facility in California. Damn. Yes.

00:57:23 Speaker_03
That wasn't even intentional.

00:57:27 Speaker_03
In reflecting on the case for the Discovery Channel, executive director of the Los Angeles Police Museum, it's a mouthful, told producers, Paul was from a moneyed family and certainly could have found easier ways to get money.

00:57:39 Speaker_05
Yeah.

00:57:39 Speaker_03
He said as these attacks went on, each got more and more violent. I don't think he was killing for insurance money. I think Prevailer was a stone cold killer. I think exactly.

00:57:47 Speaker_04
I think it started off as a money thing and like, or what he was trying to think of as a money thing, but there's no way.

00:57:55 Speaker_03
I think the money was an added bonus. I think he liked the feeling of power of being able to just be like, that person gone.

00:58:01 Speaker_04
And he's obviously like a monster. I mean, like he was a monster in his own marriages.

00:58:06 Speaker_03
Yeah.

00:58:06 Speaker_04
He's a monster.

00:58:07 Speaker_03
He had his own parents attacked as an anniversary gift. His dad was shot in the face. Like, are you kidding me? Yeah. Like wild.

00:58:13 Speaker_04
Poor Layla. I know. Like he's a monster. And then to find out that the woman he was cheating on you with was sitting in the car, in the getaway car.

00:58:22 Speaker_03
And then she's just out walking around. Like what? That's fucked. Yeah, scary, scary shit. What a strange story. Very strange case. Very interesting. And who the fuck killed Cheryl? Well, that's that's the the main takeaway. And who killed Marlon?

00:58:38 Speaker_03
Is who the fuck is the person who did it? You don't know. They escaped into the darkness. Wow. Which is honestly like the scariest shit I've ever heard. Very haunting. Yeah. You just wonder who he was connected to. Wow.

00:58:54 Speaker_04
That's the thing. Like you don't know how far this goes.

00:58:56 Speaker_03
Damn. You just don't. But we'll never know. That's that. That's the case for you. And we hope you keep listening. We hope you keep it weird. Damn. But not so weird that all you can say is damn.

00:59:13 Speaker_02
But I've been there too, so keep it that way.

00:59:14 Speaker_03
I can't help it. Bye, damn. Damn.

00:59:17 Speaker_02
Fevers.

01:00:17 Speaker_03
If you like Morbid, you can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music.

01:00:27 Speaker_03
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01:00:33 Speaker_06
Hello, ladies and gerbs, boys and girls. The Grinch is back again to ruin your Christmas season with his The Grinch Holiday Podcast.

01:00:40 Speaker_06
After last year, he's learned a thing or two about hosting, and he's ready to rant against Christmas cheer and roast his celebrity guests like chestnuts on an open fire.

01:00:50 Speaker_06
You can listen with the whole family as guest stars like Jon Hamm, Brittany Broski, and Danny DeVito try to persuade the mean old Grinch that there's a lot to love about the insufferable holiday season. But that's not all.

01:01:02 Speaker_06
Somebody stole all the children of Whoville's letters to Santa, and everybody thinks the Grinch is responsible. It's a real Whoville whodunit. Can Cindy Lou and Max help clear the Grinch's name? Grab your hot cocoa and cozy slippers to find out.

01:01:16 Speaker_06
Follow Tiz the Grinch Holiday Podcast on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Unlock weekly Christmas mystery bonus content and listen to every episode ad free by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.