by Sarah A. Peterson-Camacho
“I killed her because I hated her. I thought of killing her before, but I never had the guts until now.” –Alice Elizabeth Richard, 14, 1950
It was as plain and straight-forward a motive as there ever could be, but no one paid it any mind. There just had to be more to it than that—after all, what would a teenage bobbysoxer know, even if she was the killer in question?
Fresno. California; Sunday, March 19, 1950
No one heard a thing as a bullet entered her dreaming brain.
It was a balmy enough night that Mr. and Mrs. Edgard V. Richard had opted to sleep on the enclosed porch out back of 4721 Harvey Avenue; the first day of spring, in fact, was just around the corner. A soft gray veil of silence swathed the suburban home in the starry, pre-dawn dark.
The hum of a dial tone—then the voice of her 14-year-old daughter Alice—broke through the sweet fog of sleep. But it was the word “murder” that jolted Mary Richard out of dreamland.
“‘Come to 4721 Harvey right away,’” The Fresno Bee would quote on Monday, March 20, 1950. “‘There’s been a murder here.’
“The incredulous mother took the telephone from the girl and advised the deputy sheriff: ‘Don’t pay any attention to her. She walks in her sleep, and probably is having a nightmare. I’ll check and let you know if there is anything wrong.’
“A few moments later, the mother hysterically confirmed the girl’s statement. ‘It’s true,’ she sobbingly told the deputy. ‘Send someone out right away.’”
Killer Alice Richard and her twin sister and victim Sally Richard, from The Los Angeles Times, dated Monday, March 20, 1950
And Sally’s twin, Alice, was the very picture of perfect, placid calm, if a bit smug. Her eyes—variously described as either blue or brown—almost sparkled. Their mother, Mary, felt nauseous and light-headed, as if she might faint; her legs gave way as she sank back into her groggy husband’s arms and wept.
When responding officers—Deputy Sheriffs Clarence Enos, Kenneth Larson, Joseph Quick, and Cecil Poole—arrived at the Richard residence, they had no idea what to expect. The dead girl’s parents wanted desperately to believe that their daughter Alice was sleepwalking when she took her twin’s life—but the teenager’s confession blew that theory to pieces, so to speak.
“The girl readily admitted killing her sister,” noted the Bee, “but it was only after persistent questioning that the officers got her story of her hate for her twin, because ‘she was loud and stupid’—and of having hated her since they were in the sixth grade.
“The officers were told the twins returned home from a neighborhood babysitting assignment at 1:45 a.m… They retired … Just after 3 o’clock, Alice got up, found two cartridges in a bureau drawer, and the bolt-action rifle—which a brother … had thought of hiding because of a threat he had heard while the twins were quarreling.
“At about 3:10, Alice placed the rifle muzzle behind her sleeping sister’s right ear and sent a bullet into her brain. Then the girl laid the gun down across her sister’s body … and dialed the sheriff’s office on the extension telephone near her parents’ bed.”
And after Alice admitted to threatening Sally the previous day (Saturday, March 18), as they tussled over the telephone, her two brothers—Edgard, Jr., 16, and Robert, 13—corroborated her story, filling officers in on how they had separated the two girls.
“‘I’m going to kill you, and I’m going to kill you with a gun,’ Alice was quoted as telling Sally,” The Fresno Bee imparted. “Robert told [how] she mentioned the .22-caliber bolt-action rifle, which was kept in a closet in his bedroom … ‘I was afraid she meant it, so I went and got the .22,’ said Robert. ‘There were no shells in it, but I hid it under my bed. Then I got to thinking, there weren’t any shells in it—and I put it back.’”
Once the brothers had succeeded in talking Alice down, Sally relaxed but was still clearly shaken by her twin’s vitriol. She set about getting ready for her babysitting gig that evening. As the friendlier of the twins, she usually scored way more points—and dollars—with the neighbors when they needed childcare, much to the pricklier Alice’s dismay.
When Sally arrived at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Verlin Robinson around 8:45 p.m., she seemed more subdued than usual to the couple, but still in good spirits. Their two young daughters—Joyce, 7, and Wanda, 5—had already gone to bed, so it would be a quiet night, they assured her. They did think it odd, however, when Sally asked, “in a childish manner,” if she could come live with the Robinsons.
“Alice left home at 10:30 p.m., remarking she was going to ‘see how Sally is getting along,’” revealed the Bee. “Both [girls] remained in the home until the Robinsons returned about 1:30 a.m. … While talking to the girls, the Robinsons jokingly offered to tear a $5 bill in half, because they did not have the change to pay Sally.
“‘She’s not going to need it,’ Alice remarked ominously.”
Alice with Lieutenant J.W. Ripperdan, from The Fresno Bee, dated Monday, March 20, 1950
As she was read her rights by Deputy Sheriff Enos, the unruffled teen smiled serenely during the proceedings, and she proved to be quite chatty too. Running through the sequence of events that lead up to the killing, Alice held her courtside audience—including Assistant District Attorney Dan B. Eymann—in thrall.
After leaving the Robinson’s house about 1:30 Sunday morning, “the girls went to bed immediately after they got home,” The Fresno Bee reported, “but Alice remained awake … she got out of her twin bed, pulled on her jeans, and made her way through the dark house—to [her younger brother] Robert’s bedroom.
“She took the rifle from the closet. In the adjoining bathroom, she removed two cartridges from a drawer … [then] went back to the girls’ room. ‘I felt around until I reached her head,’ she told Eymann. ‘Then I put my hand back of her ear, and put the muzzle of the rifle against her head—and pulled the trigger.’
“Under questioning by Eymann, she declared she made up her mind to kill Sally after the quarrel early in the evening … ‘At the earliest opportunity,’ was her reply to a question as to when she planned the slaying.
“It was then,” divulged the Bee, “she added she had, on previous occasions, thought of killing her twin, but lacked the courage.”
When the proceedings had concluded, Alice Richard posed demurely for the news cameras as she was escorted from the Fresno County courthouse by Mrs. Cody Balkwill of the sheriff’s office, Sheriff’s Lieutenant J.W. Ripperdan, and Deputy Sheriffs Enos and Larson. She was then transferred to the Fresno County Detention Home for juvenile offenders, where she would be staying in the days to come.
Tuesday, March 21, 1950
Entering the juvenile court of Superior Judge Arthur C. Shepard, Alice Elizabeth Richard now looked a tad less smug, flanked by Probation Officer John M. Ashjian and Deputy Probation Officer Ethel Weisert. Looking every bit the little lady with her blonde curls tucked under a colorful kerchief, the pretty teen wore a blue sweater set under a long tan coat … but the cracks in her polished veneer were beginning to show.
Richard twins’ parents, Edgard and Mary Richard, from The Fresno Bee, dated Monday, March 20, 1950
“The jurist [Judge Shepard] … called for a routine, but thorough, examination of the events leading up to the early Sunday morning slaying, as well as a complete study of the child’s background. His decision was made at the conclusion of [the] juvenile court hearing, which lasted but eight minutes.”
As Alice was escorted from the judge’s chambers by Ashjian and Weisert, newsmen circled the weary trio like hungry sharks stalking live prey. Peppered with a litany of questions, Ashjian took the lead, informing the media of his young charge’s model behavior—and of her voracious reading habit at the detention home’s small library.
“In response to newsmen’s questions … she [Alice] stared straight ahead, and declined to answer most queries. When asked if she was being treated all right in the detention home, she half smirked and responded jokingly: ‘They beat me every night.’”
As a fuller portrait of the Richard twins began to emerge, investigators discovered a rather ordinary pair of teenaged sisters, with all the usual sisterly squabbles. Family, friends, teachers, and classmates all agreed that Sally Elise had been the livelier, more outgoing of the two, while Alice Elizabeth tended to be on the quieter, moodier side.
Both girls were good students, noted one of the girls’ teachers, a Sister Mary Paola, but over the past few weeks, Alice’s grades had been slipping—made more noticeable by the fact that “the one who is living [was] possibly a little brighter.”
The Richard murder house (which is no longer standing), from The Fresno Bee, dated Monday, March 20, 1950
Mrs. Richard didn’t believe her daughter could have possibly been in her right mind to kill her own twin sister in cold blood. She and her husband, Edgard, Sr., mourned the loss of not one, but two daughters, she said.
And the twins’ older brother, Edgard, Jr., was of the opinion that, if anything, the dead Sally would have been the more likely twin to wish her sister harm. “‘Alice was the better-looking [one],’” The Fresno Bee quoted him, “‘and I could see Sally being jealous of her.’
“The brother said Alice was ‘sophisticated and cool,’ and he does not think she is ‘putting on an act’ in her attitude since the fatal shooting. He asserted: ‘I think she’s serious. She’s done it, and she’s made up her mind to take her punishment.’”
Wednesday, March 22, 1950
Four of her classmates hoisted the body of Sally Elise Richard—at rest in a closed gray casket topped with a lurid spray of blood-red roses and snowy carnations—up the steps of St. John’s Cathedral in downtown Fresno. Hundreds of family members, friends, schoolmates, and neighbors crowded the pews to pay their respects as Reverend William Watson revealed that the deceased had planned on entering the convent, had she lived.
Organ music swelled mournfully to the cathedral’s vaulted rafters as candles glowed. Men, women, and children wept openly and without shame. But one prominent member of the large Richard family was conspicuously absent.
As her twin sister was being laid to rest in Holy Cross Cemetery, Alice Elizabeth Richard kept her distance. Not only had she no desire to be there, but “instead, she prepared to undergo the first in a series of question periods directed by Dr. Jackson C. Dillon, a state psychiatrist,” reported the Bee. “… today [he] began a study to determine what mental quirk caused Alice, 14 … to hate her twin sister, Sally, so much that she shot Sally to death.
“The psychiatrist—appointed by Juvenile Judge Arthur C. Shepard to probe into the child slayer’s mind—said the examinations are being conducted in [his] clinic…
“Meanwhile, A.A. George [Alice’s attorney] revealed a dozen nationally known mental experts had offered their services to the court. He said the psychiatrists are interested in the psychological problem in which twins—usually attached to one another—could kill.”
For the most part, authorities reported, Alice was proving to be one of the Fresno County Detention Home’s happier charges: she was sleeping soundly for the first time in weeks, had a healthy appetite, and was keeping up with her studies. She displayed a keen interest in the inner workings of the law, and remained an avid reader. In fact, the only objection she really had about the place was the home’s no-lipstick policy.
Thursday, March 23, 1950
Nationwide interest in the case became so intense—particularly regarding the relationship between twins and deviant behavior—that The Fresno Bee commissioned an article on the subject by one of the country’s leading clinical psychologists. Dr. Donald A. Laird of Colgate University sought to allay the public’s fears concerning the correlation between twins and violent crime.
Sally’s funeral at St. John’s Cathedral, from The Stockton Evening and Sunday Record, dated Thursday, March 23, 1950
The sheer irony of all of Laird’s posturing, however, lay in the fact that this good doctor had only cited studies and examples of identical twins––which Alice and Sally Richard were most emphatically not. The two girls had shared the same genetic relationships as their four other sisters and two brothers … and Alice had just proven that she would rather take out her fraternal twin than tolerate her for one iota longer.
But what no one could figure out—not the psychiatrists, nor the detectives, the attorneys, not even Alice’s own family—was precisely why this popular, intelligent, beautiful teen girl would blow her twin sister’s brains out … even though the killer herself had already given the answer to that question. Repeatedly.
“She says something told her Sally had to be destroyed,” the Richard’s family attorney A.A. George told The Fresno Bee. “She believes she would repeat the act because both she and Sally would be happier.
“When she was asked why she hated Sally, she said Sally was off balance … stupid, boisterous, noisy, acted like a nut, and sang at the top of her voice … I asked her if she knew the difference between right and wrong. She said she did—and she knows it is wrong to kill a human being.
“Almost in the same breath, she will say she still was right in killing Sally—and would do it over again … At this stage, this is a case for the psychiatrists alone. Her lack of any logical reasons for killing her sister—and her attitude toward what she had done—show this.”
Except that murder never was—or is—logical, or rational … understandable in certain circumstances, maybe, but never reasonable.
Saturday, April 1, 1950
Alice Elizabeth Richard was ruled to be mentally ill on April Fool’s Day, 1950; she was diagnosed as schizophrenic, even though her behavior resembled anything but schizophrenia as the so-called experts defined it.
“Schizophrenics—who commonly are said to have split personalities—as a rule display [a] complete lack of emotion, loquaciousness, and usually have no reasonable motive for their deeds.”
If anything, Alice was relieved by her diagnosis; for, if truth be told, it was her ticket out of Fresno. By Monday, April 3, she was being transferred up north to Napa State Hospital, leaving the Richard family absent two daughters. They clung to their faith, and to each other.
She didn’t even seem to miss her family all that much, either; the 14-year-old murderess appeared to be responding very well to treatment—but not so well to family visits. In fact, they were enough to make the girl go flat-out rogue.
Saturday, August 5, 1950
“Alice Elizabeth Richard, 14—who killed her twin sister, Sally, in their Fresno home last March—escaped … from the Napa State Hospital while her parents were on their way to visit her,” The Fresno Bee would note. “She fled the mental institution in the company of Millicent Graham, 13, of Fortuna, a wardmate.
Alice after her escape from Napa State Hospital, from The Fresno Bee, dated Monday, August 7, 1950
A doctor at Napa State observed that the Richard girl had been making much progress in her treatment, and had made no previous attempts to escape the premises. But she had, however, known that her parents were on their way to see her.
But the world did not have to wait long to learn the next plot twist. Twenty-four hours had now passed since Alice Richard’s flight from Napa State Hospital with her 13-year-old female accomplice.
But the Fresno County sheriff’s deputies who had staked out the Richard family’s home in Fresno were to be sorely disappointed—in a total wrecking ball to the deputies’ reasoning, the girl turned herself in the next day at San Francisco’s Mission Street police station. (And really, why would anyone in their right mind think Alice Richard would return to the home of the very family she had scaled a fence to avoid?)
“I’m Alice Richard,” the Bee quoted her on Monday, August 7. “I’m a runaway from the Napa Hospital. I shot my sister.”
Making no mention of her younger companion, the soon-to-be 15-year-old fugitive told the police of hopping the hospital’s fence and of hitchhiking all the way to San Francisco. All it took was four hitched rides to make it to the City by the Bay.
“A funny thing—when I was trying to hitch my first ride, just after I got out—you know who passed me?” she asked the cops. “It was my mother going to visit me.”
“After the girl arrived in San Francisco,” divulged The Fresno Bee, “she strolled down Market Street, attended a movie, had a soft drink, and ate a donut. [And] although she at first planned to go to Southern California … she changed her mind—and gave herself up because she was without money or a place to sleep.
“Although Alice insisted she went to San Francisco alone, authorities still are seeking Millicent Graham, 13, another Napa Hospital patient, who is believed to have escaped with her.”
The Richard girl noted that none of the motorists she hitched rides with had any idea who she really was, as she had given each a different story. Every one of the male drivers had been a “gentleman,” she said, with one even offering her bus fare—which she declined, as she still had $3 to her name, at that point in her journey.
“A newsman asked her if she was sorry her sister, Sally, was dead. ‘I’m sorry I did it, but I’m not sorry she’s dead,’ she replied. ‘I know how it sounds, but that’s the way I feel about it.’”
A photo of a smirking, sun-tanned Alice ran alongside the follow-up story in the Bee, looking for all the world like your average teen bobbysoxer on summer vacation: her arms crossed over her flower-print blouse, a sun-kissed Cheshire grin, and oddly, a ring on the third finger of her left hand—perhaps a portent of things to come…
Friday, December 29, 1950
By the tumultuous year’s end, Alice Richard found herself transferred yet again—this time to the California Youth Authority (CYA), by the judicial decree of Superior Judge Arthur C. Shepard. The fun and games at Napa State were now over; it was time for some serious, long-term treatment to begin.
“Since the shooting [of her twin sister], she has been under constant observation as a ward of the juvenile court,” The Fresno Bee revealed, “but the commitments have been renewed every 90 days. The new order means she will be treated until pronounced cured of her mental disorder, which previously was identified as schizophrenia.
“It is reported that she has shown slight improvement during recent weeks, and no longer is marked by the impassiveness which she displayed immediately after the shooting. Judge Shepard released the following statement after a juvenile court hearing at which the girl appeared:
“‘Alice Richard is on her way back to a state department of mental hygiene clinic as a ward of the CYA, jurisdiction having been transferred by an order of the juvenile court. The court feels the temporary orders heretofore made for observation and treatment should be supplanted by the long-term control which reports from doctors indicate is necessary.’”
Alice Elizabeth Richard was released back to her family sometime after her 21st birthday in 1956: her twin sister, Sally Elise, had been gone six years by then … deprived of adulthood, and of joining the convent. Her younger sisters were now in high school.
Not much is known about Alice in the years immediately following her release, but on Christmas Eve, 1959, she closed out the decade by joining one Saul Schoenenberger in holy wedded matrimony at the Fresno County courthouse. She was 24, he 27.
Alice as a married mother of two in 1969, from The Herald Times Reporter, dated Thursday, September 4, 1969
And, after a second, more formal El Dorado County ceremony in January of 1960, the newlyweds embarked on life’s next great adventure together: parenthood. Alice Richard Schoenenberger would go on to give birth to two children—a son and a daughter—over the course of the next decade. And by 1969, she was a slim, bespectacled homemaker and mother of two small children … who had recently founded her own nonprofit charitable organization.
“‘It looks like it is going to be extremely successful,’ Mrs. Saul Schoenenberger—president of the newly organized Women’s Association for International Friendship, Inc.—said, when referring to the corporation,” reported The Herald Times Reporter of Manitowoc, Wisconsin, on Thursday, September 4, 1969.
“W.A.I.F., Inc., is a group of Bechtel wives in Two Rivers—organized almost a year ago— ‘dedicated to helping poor or orphaned children receive food, clothing, medical care, and educational materials.’
Although a relatively young organization, the group has already presented its first check of $300 to its treasurer—to be forwarded to the LaVida Mission School on the Navajo Indian Reservation in New Mexico.
“‘The main reason for forming the corporation,’ Mrs. Schoenenberger continued, instead of working through an established agency, ‘is to make sure that all of the money will reach the children.’”
An accompanying photo in the Times Reporter showed W.A.I.F., Inc.’s founding officers—including a slender, raven-haired Alice in cats-eye glasses, the nonprofit’s president—at their organization’s Fox Hills Country Club headquarters, their conference table cluttered with a silver tea service and a fluted glass ashtray.
Nineteen years had passed since Alice Elise Richard had put the muzzle of a .22-caliber bolt-action rifle to her sleeping twin sister’s head and pulled the trigger. Whether it was marriage, motherhood, or just time that had changed her for the better, Mrs. Alice Schoenenberger was no longer that simpering, petulant, pretty killer of almost two decades previous. She and her husband would go on to live long and prosper, retiring in their golden years to the Pacific Northwest.
But as for Sally Elise Richard? She would remain forever 14.
Photos provided by author.
Works Cited
“Fresno Girl Slays ‘Hated’ Twin Sister, 14, in Bed.” The Fresno Bee, Monday, March 20, 1950, p. 1.
“Court Orders Sanity Test for Fresno Girl Who Killed Twin.” The Fresno Bee, Tuesday, March 21, 1950, p. 1.
“Mother Believes Slaying of Daughter was Impulsive.” The Fresno Bee, Tuesday, March 21, 1950, p. 1.
“Psychiatrist Opens Study of Girl Killer.” The Fresno Bee, Wednesday, March 22, 1950, p. 1.
Kidder, Karl. “Age-Old Catholic Rites Mark Funeral of Slain Youngster.” The Fresno Bee, Wednesday, March 22, 1950, p. 1.
“Schoolmates Say Alice Suffered Severe Headaches.” The Fresno Bee, Wednesday, March 22, 1950, p. 1.
“Mental Test of Alice Will Take Week.” The Fresno Bee, Thursday, March 23, 1950, p. 1.
Laird, Donald A. “Psychologist Scouts Belief Twins Have Unique Quirks.” The Fresno Bee, Thursday, March 23, 1950, p. 1.
“Alice Says She Would ‘Kill Again.’” The Fresno Bee, Friday, March 24, 1950, p. 1.
“Alice May Be Visited by Parents.” The Fresno Bee, Sunday, Marc 26, 1950, p. 1.
“Fresno Twin Slayer is Ruled Mentally Ill; Will Be Confined in Hospital.” The Fresno Bee, Saturday, April 1, 1950, p. 1.
“Alice Richard is Taken to Hospital for Mental Study.” The Fresno Bee, Monday, April 3, 1950, p. 13.
“Journalistic Efforts at Central Win Eager Reception at School.” The La Crosse Tribune (La Cross, Wisconsin), Monday, May 29, 1950, p. 14.
“Seniors Hold Last Assembly.” The La Cross Tribune (La Cross, Wisconsin), Tuesday, June 6, 1950, p. 18.
“Girl Slayer of Twin is Kept in State Hospital.” The Fresno Bee, Sunday, July 23, 1950, p. 1.
“Fresno Twin Slayer Escapes from Hospital.” The Fresno Bee, Sunday, August 6, 1950, p. 1.
“Alice Richard Gives Up in SF, Returns to Napa Hospital.” The Fresno Bee, Monday, August 7, 1950, p. 1.
“Central High Student Receives Scholarship.” The La Cross Tribune (La Crosse, Wisconsin), Friday, October 6, 1950, p. 5.
“Alice Richard is Transferred to Youth Authority.” The Fresno Bee, Friday, Dec. 29, 1950, p. 3.
“Schoenenberger-Richard.” The Fresno Bee, Thursday, January 7, 1960, p. 40.
“Bechtel Wives Form Charity Organization.” The Herald Times Reporter (Manitowoc, Wisconsin), Thursday, September 4, 1969, p. 8.
Kulczyk, David. California’s Deadliest Women: Dangerous Dames and Murderous Moms. Fresno, California: Craven Street Books, 2016.
www.findagrave.com www.ancestry.com
What an astounding story! Things were very different in 1950. The justice system actually moved swiftly. And they tried to “cure” a cold-blooded murderer? Then she had children? It’s all astounding.