S9, E3: One Diamondback From Murder

One Diamondback From Murder I’ve been missing historical murder stories, so I’m bringing on another! This is the story of Ray Lisenba who grew up in Alabama in the early 1900’s and began his working life in the cotton fields, not an easy way to make a living, but an honest one. Later, Ray’s brother-in-law paid for him to go to barber school. He became known as the red-headed barber. In 1914, Ray married his first wife, Maud. It seems the marriage was not the best and by 1921, Maud filed for divorce saying Ray was “kinky” and enjoyed sadistic sex, but there weren’t more details as to what that entailed for them. Ray changed his name to Robert S. James – maybe he wanted an easier to pronounce last name? He then marries his 2nd wife, Vera May and moved to Kansas and opened a barbershop. Robert and Vera seemed to live a quiet life for a while. People described Robert at the time as pale, portly with such attractive features as "beady, red-rimmed green eyes, with a high nasal voice." He slicked his red hair back and neighbors said he was “less thank a half-wit,” so he wasn’t great at academics but he made up for it in his charm. So charming he was, that he was one day confronted by a rageful man with a shotgun for impregnating his daughter who was not Vera May, his wife. Oops – Also during this time, Robert found out he had been the sole beneficiary of his uncle’s life insurance policy when his uncle passed and received $4000. Having hit this little lottery, he left Vera and moved to Fargo, ND, opening up a barbershop there in 1932. Soon enough, Robert found another willing companion and married his 3rd wife, Winona Wallace. After marrying, Robert quickly took out a life insurance policy on her for $14,000. Maybe he got the idea after his uncle died? A few months after marrying Winona, the two went on their honeymoon to Colorado Springs – hey – couldn’t do a story without Colorado, even when I didn’t mean to! The pair went to Pike’s Peak which is the highest summit of the southern front range of the Rocky Mountains. Oh man, there are some wicked roads in the mountains, and I’m guessing they weren’t much better back in the 1930’s. Well, they’re driving down the mountain and Robert loses control of the car and drives off the side of the mountain. Luckily for Robert, he was able to jump out of the car in time, but Winona was trapped in the car and tumbled down the mountain with the car. Robert went and got help and incredibly, when rescuers reached Winona, they found her body had been thrown from the car. She was unconscious but alive. Her head was badly hurt, and they found something weird in the car. A bloody hammer. Winona spends a couple of weeks in a hospital until she was released where she continued to recover in a Colorado Springs vacation rental. She had no memory of the accident. During their stay at the rental, Robert walked to a nearby grocery store to pick up some supplies and asked an employee for a lift back to the rental; probably not wanting to carry a crap-ton of groceries on foot. When they got to the rental, Robert finds Winona drowned in the bathtub. James told the medical examiner that she was self-conscious of her ginormous gash on her head and wanted to wash her hair which I’m sure was blood encrusted. Her doctor had told her not to wash her wound. But, before he left, Winona had told him supposedly that she was going to wash it anyway and he said he thought she must have gotten dizzy and slipped in the tub while he was gone. Despite the bloody hammer having been in the car, authorities didn’t question that and deemed Winona’s death as an accidental drowning. Lucky Robert collected the insurance money. Accounts seem to differ on where Robert went right after this point. He marries again, this time to a woman in New Orleans, possibly a kind of in-the-moment wedding. Her name was Ruth Thomas. Robert quickly annulled the marriage, claiming he had been drunk when they wed so he wasn’t in his right mind. Ruth had a different story. She claimed Robert had insisted on taking a life insurance policy out on her. She refused, saying, "People who take out a life insurance policy shortly end up dead." When that ploy didn’t work, Robert found another way to keep funds rolling in. Robert’s nephew, Cornelius Wright, was home on leave from the military. Robert convinced Cornelius to take out an insurance policy on himself with Robert as the beneficiary. It just so happened that Robert leant Cornelius his car while he was on leave. Somehow, Cornelius ended up driving it off a cliff and died. After his death, a mechanic inspected the car and said the steering wheel had been tampered with. Now a bit richer, Robert returns to Alabama. Remember that brother-in-law that put Robert through barber school? Well, he has a daughter that’s now 18. Robert takes a liking to the girl and begins an affair with her. His own niece. He’s such a Romeo, that he convinces her to run away with him to California where he opens up, yet another barber shop and he sets up his new love as a manicurist. I read differing accounts at this part, so I’m not exactly sure how the niece fits in here. That’s the last account I found about her. It seems Robert’s barbershop is doing well and I’m not sure if his niece left and he hired another manicurist to take her place, or if he hired another manicurist in addition to the niece. A tall, beautiful 26 year old blonde named Mary Busch spent her teen years growing up in Michigan. Eventually, she moved to California and for a manicurist at a thriving barbershop in 1935. This is Robert’s barbershop. Just a month after hiring Mary, Robert, now in his late 30’s, I believe, convinces Mary to marry him. He quickly takes out a $10,000 life insurance policy on her. Three months into the marriage, Mary becomes pregnant, but even the prospect of a baby doesn’t stop Robert’s greed. Robert solicits the help of one of his customers, a cash-strapped ex-sailor and fry cook named Charles Hope. First, the pair tried killing Mary by releasing black widows where she was working in the garden. Mary complained in a letter to a friend that she had a swollen leg from a bite she received in her garden, but it didn’t kill her. So, Robert and Charles decide to try rattlesnakes. Robert tells Charles he’ll give him $100 to get him a couple of the deadly snakes. Good ol’ Chuck meets up with a man known as “Snake Joe” at his snake farm in Pasadena. The pair claimed the snakes were being purchased to settle a bet. One story said the bet was to see if a dog would win against the snake or vice versa. Another version said they just wanted to see if it could strike and eat a big rabbit on their land. They ended up with 2 six-year-old desert diamondbacks named Lethal and Lightening. Then they set about putting their plan into motion. Robert convinced Mary to get an abortion, which was illegal at the time. He claimed he found a doctor that would perform the procedure at their home, but they’d have to cover her eyes so the doctor’s identity would remain unknown. Then he filled her with whiskey and bromides, I’m guessing something considered a calming drug back then? Once Mary went unconscious, Robert placed her on the table in their breakfast nook. He tied Mary to the table, her mouth and eyes covered with tape. The snakes were in a box, angry and waiting. Robert stuffed Mary’s left leg into the box where the snakes bit Mary three times. For hours, Mary writhed in agony, but the venom takes a long time to kill. Charles, panicked and not knowing what to do, sat in a car in the garage, waiting for news of Mary’s death. Robert continuously came out to give him updates and nips of whiskey to calm his nerves. Hours continued to pass when Robert finally ran out of patience and drowned Mary in the bathtub. Now late into the night, the two men carried Mary’s body out to the fish pond on the couple’s property and lay by the fishpond to give the air of an accident. The next day, while at the barbershop, Robert invited friends over to his house to have dinner. They all (except Robert) assumed Mary was home, cooking the dinner, but when they arrived, they were concerned when Mary wasn’t there. Putting on a good show of being the worried husband, he suggested they all search the property for her. Soon enough, they came across Mary’s body by the pond with a swollen, blue leg with puncture marks. Authorities were called and labeled the death an accidental drowning. But this time, Robert wasn’t getting away with the murder as easily. Robert applied to redeem the money from Mary’s insurance policy, but this time, the insurance investigator assigned to the case actually did his job and looked into Robert. His interest was peaked when he saw that Robert had been married five times and that another wife had also drowned. He raised the alarm with police who bugged Robert’s house. The bugs revealed that Robert was still in a relationship with his niece, so they were able to arrest him for incest and he was taken in for interrogation. During interrogation, he confessed, kind of. He claimed Charles had planned the murder, trying to take some of the heat off of himself. At Robert’s house, investigators found several pamphlets from “marriage bureaus” which was an old timey match making service. They found an envelope with a list of nearly 200 special marriage prospects Robert had saved. One that was underlined was the name of a 53 year-old widow in New York who made $10,000 yearly. That equals about 217,000 in today’s numbers. Robert and Charles were arraigned together on May 6 of 1937 and charged with first degree murder. The men were handcuffed together but had to be separated when Robert was threatening Charles that if he were to plead guilty, he’d break his neck. Meanwhile, in a room in the district attorneys office, a test was being conducted. A group of men huddled over a box of hissing snakes. Snake Joe bent over the box, caught the snakes, Lethal and Lightening, and milked them to collect their venom. Apparently, the law took very seriously the incest charges as Robert was sentenced to 150 years on 3 morals charges involving his niece. As for the murder charge, his fate was sealed when Charles pleaded guilty to his part in the murder in exchange for avoiding the death sentence. The discovery of a black widow spider nest at Robert’s house and Charles’s testimony also helped to prove Robert’s guilt. During the trial, Robert pled not guilty by reason of insanity. He also claimed his confession had been coerced by police. A strange decision during trial by the lawyers also pit Robert directly against Charles. They decided to have the two men reenact Mary’s murder. Robert lay on the heavy wood table of the attorney, playing the part of Mary where Charles was supposed to grab Robert’s foot and jam it into a replica of the original snake box. The actual snakes were brought into the court in a cage as evidence, still alive and rattling. Robert and Charles began arguing and a recess had to be called. Coming back to court after recess, people were horrified to find out that Lethal the diamondback had escaped into the courtroom and was rattling loudly under a bookcase. Snake Joe’s expertise was once again called upon and he was able to round up the angry creature. On July 25, Robert was convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to hang. When he learned his fate, he simply muttered, “I can take it.” Actually, you can’t. You’ll die. Robert spent his final years in prison filing appeal after appeal with no luck, but he did find jesus with the help of a religious worker who seemed enamored with him. On May 2, 1942, Robert James became the last man to hang in the state of California, but the execution wasn’t a smooth one. The rope was the wrong length and it took an excruciating 10 minutes for Rattlesnake James as he’d become to be known, to die. Rattlesnake James became so famous, proudly so for him, while in jail because of his story that photographers were allowed in to do photo shoots of him. They had him pose with a saw pretending to cut the bars, another shows him with a cigar and smiling with the prison bars in the background. Like prisoner glamor shots. Executedtoday.com murderpedia Wikipedia Echopress.com LAMAG.com Latimes.com