A LOOK BACK:

It was the case that captured the imaginations across the state, the killing of an elite Newport Beach couple, with their teenage daughter and her fiance accused of committing the crime out of love and greed 62 years ago today.

As told through archived Los Angeles Times clips, on March 15, 1947, financier Walter Overell and his wife, Beulah, were killed in a yacht explosion in Newport Harbor. When their bodies were recovered, pathologists found circular wounds in the couple’s skulls and said they were possibly caused by hammers.

Authorities turned their attention to the couple’s 17-year-old daughter, also named Beulah, and her 21-year-old fiance, George Gollum. With her parents’ death, Beulah looked to inherit an estate some estimated at more than $600,000.

Authorities presented evidence to a grand jury that they claimed proved the couple likely murdered the socially-prominent couple, then sank the boat with a charge of dynamite possibly detonated by the ship’s battery after rowing back to shore.

At one point, the couple’s defense attorneys argued in the media that Walter Overell had actually killed his wife, then himself.

As headlines at the time suggest, this case was full of false leads, shocking revelations and all the twists and turns of a mystery novel.

It came out that the Overells were actually in deep financial trouble, and the day before their deaths, Walter Overell was seen drinking (unusual for him) and brooding about his family’s future.

As prosecutors continued to build their case against the amorous couple, another twist emerged when letters between the two in jail were stolen and published in the newspaper. The attorney general said the contents of the letters “contained admissions, but not confessions.”

A key witness to the case, an ex-Army demolition expert seen consulting with Gollum days before the boat explosion, was in hiding with state authorities hot on his trail. When the trial got into full swing, things only got stranger.

The couple’s defense released Beulah’s diary to strengthen their case, and Newport Beach’s Chief of Police, R. R. Hodgkinson reportedly got a death threat his wife received. Newspapers reported someone with an accent called his home and said, “We’re going to get that bully of a husband of yours.”

In the end, reported conflicts of interest among prosecutors and too many questions raised by a large defense team funded by the family’s money freed led to the couple’s acquittal. Beulah and Gollum separated after the trial.

Reporter JOSEPH SERNA may be reached at (714) 966-4619 or at [email protected].