Mugshot March is back, for the fifth year running! This year’s mugshots are from San Quentin prison. We begin with the case of Pearl Baldwin.

The Baldwins were at it again. On a muggy evening in September 1929, neighbors heard angry shouting emanating from the couple’s home at 906 Bird street in Oroville, California. Ten minutes later, the argument came to a sudden halt following the crack of a rifle. Inside the house, William Baldwin lay on the floor gazing up at his wife Pearl.

Baldwin lived a couple of hours after being shot and gave an ante-mortem statement to police and the surgeons attempting to save him. “It was an accident, I leaned on the gun and it went off,” Bill Baldwin had told the doctors. He had just come home from hunting, and he’d forgotten to put the safety on the rifle. It was his own fault.

It strained the credulity of the sheriff and police chief to believe Baldwin, an avid sportsman, would leave his rifle cocked and loaded on the dining room table. They thought he was trying to save the mother of his daughter.

Pearl gave a statement to police and it confirmed law enforcement’s suspicions. It also resulted in a murder charge against her.

“A murder charge will be filed against Mrs. Pearl Baldwin, 35, for the shooting of her husband, William C. Baldwin, 40, last Saturday night,” the Oroville Mercury Register announced in its Sep 25, 1929 edition.  An inquest jury found Baldwin came to his death from “a gunshot wound inflicted by Pearl Baldwin through criminal negligence while pointing a rifle at the deceased.”

The case had an especial interest for the people of Oroville; the victim was the mayor’s son. When Mrs. Baldwin appeared in the crowded courtroom a few days after the tragedy, and listened as her statement to Sheriff C. W. Toland was read.

Pearl said they quarreled when Bill came home from a hunting trip and found her dressed to go to a dance. At 8 o’clock Baldwin, a volunteer firefighter, was summoned to respond to a fire. Pearl took their 13-year-old daughter uptown to get supper. A few minutes after they got home, Bill returned and confronted her in the kitchen. “I don’t know whether he was sober or intoxicated,” Pearl’s statement read. “He came in mad and said he was going to put me out and I wasn’t going to stay there anymore if I went to a dance.”

Mrs. Baldwin said she went into the dining room. She’d seen her husband leave his rifle there when he came home. She admitted she was “awfully mad…just mad enough to protect myself. I’d been beaten by him many a time.”

Pearl said she seized the gun and pointed it at her husband, who was standing about nine feet away from her. “I might as well put you out now,” she told him. “I was going to protect myself. I told him I wasn’t going to be put out.”

“He hollered, ‘It’s loaded!’ and I must have lowered the gun from my shoulder.” Pearl swore she didn’t cock the gun or pull the hammer up.  “I don’t know how it went off. I didn’t want to shoot.” Her husband’s body crashed to the floor and Pearl ran to a neighbor’s house screaming, “Bill is shot!”

After summoning help, she returned to Bill. He told her he would take the blame. “He told me he’d say he fell on the gun.” Pearl told him, “’You’ll say nothing of the kind because you didn’t fall on the gun.’”

 

 

At the November 1929. trial,  medical testimony established Bill couldn’t have shot himself, as he described.

The prosecutor painted a dark picture of the Baldwins’ violent marriage. He called four witnesses who swore Pearl was the aggressor and instigator.

• Lee Arthur described an incident when his friend Bill was staying at his rooms at the Orange and Olive Exposition Building. Bill was taking a bath and Lee was in another room. His friend suddenly shot past him, completely naked. His wife followed in hot pursuit, armed with a three-inch leather belt. She caught him and beat him with the buckle.
• A neighbor, William Wiedman, told of seeing Baldwin fall out of the door backwards. Mrs. Baldwin followed him, holding a chunk of wood in her hand.
• Another neighbor, Vincent Zerney,  told of his unsuccessful attempt to break up a physical fight between the Baldwins. Zerney intervened after Baldwin kicked his wife.  “I told them if they didn’t quit I’d turn the hose on them.” Zerney’s interference annoyed the couple. “They came after me.” Zerney had to retreat from the avenging Baldwins.
• Chief of Police J. O. McAtee testified that the police had been summoned to the Baldwin home before. On that occasion, the officers found Baldwin holding his wife down and yelling for the police to get a gun that was on the floor.

When she appeared on the stand, Pearl wore a black dress and a blank expression. No emotion was evident in her voice. In response to her attorney’s questions, Pearl said she finished grade school and married Baldwin when she was 18. He was an abusive man and a deadbeat, she said, adding that her husband hit her “with pliers and his fists, on my head and my body, very frequently.” She got a job to support herself and her child since Bill didn’t contribute to their support. The gas, electric, and water were temporarily shut off in May after he failed to pay the bills.

Pearl’s account of the shooting differed in many respects from her initial statement. She testified that after Bill saw her dressed for a dance, “he locked me in the bathroom and went away after disconnecting the electric lights.”

“At 9 o’clock,” she said, “Bill came home and started raising the devil. He tried to put me out of the house but I wouldn’t be put out. He told me if I went out I couldn’t come back. I said I wasn’t going out.”

She left the kitchen “to escape a licking.” She didn’t know the gun was in the dining room. She picked it up when she saw it. Her husband was five feet away when he was shot, and Mrs. Baldwin was uncertain whether he was standing still or walking toward her.

DA McGregor cross-examined Pearl. He got her to admit she was “mad at Bill” on the night of the murder but she would not go so far as to say she was “madder than she’d ever been.” She denied she hated Bill.

The DA zeroed in on the discrepancies between Mrs. Baldwin’s initial statement and her testimony. The decisive moment came when he asked, “Why did you go into the dining room?”

“To protect myself.”

But she told the court she didn’t know her husband’s rifle was in the dining room, the DA reminded her. “If you didn’t know it was there, how did going into that room give you protection?” Pearl was silent.

The jury gave a verdict of manslaughter, and she was sentenced to a term of up to 10 years.

Pearl’s San Quentin mugshot notes she was paroled just three years later in mid-December 1932, but returned “for safe-keeping” on Oct 30, 1933.  I bet there’s another story there! Pearl was discharged on October 22, 1936.

If you liked this post, please give it a like and a comment and share it on social media. It really helps other people find the site.

Check out my books on Amazon and, if you’re so inclined, Buy Me a Coffee.