In the summer of 1957, Judith Ann Dull was a young woman with the weight of the world on her shoulders. At nineteen, the blonde mother was fighting a difficult custody battle for her 14-month-old daughter, Susan. Living in the El Mirador apartments in West Hollywood, a building with its own Hollywood history, Judith and her roommates were aspiring models, taking jobs as they came to make ends meet.
For Judith, the need for money was particularly urgent; she needed to pay her lawyer to have a chance at keeping her child. This desperation made her vulnerable to the man who would cut her life tragically short.
On August 1, 1957, a man calling himself Johnny Glenn arrived at her apartment. He was there to pick Judith up for a modeling job that a roommate had passed on to her. Though initially hesitant about the geeky-looking man with horn-rimmed glasses, the offer of $20 an hour for a two-hour shoot was too much to refuse. Before leaving, her roommate took down his phone number, a small precaution that would later prove futile. Judith Ann Dull walked out of the El Mirador with the man, never to be seen alive by her loved ones again.
The man was not a photographer named Johnny Glenn, but Harvey Murray Glatman, a serial killer who used the promise of modeling work for pulp magazines as his lure. He took Judith to his apartment, a makeshift studio where his sinister intentions became terrifyingly clear. He told her the shoot required her to pose as a kidnap victim, and she initially complied as he bound her with rope. Glatman then produced a gun, capturing the genuine terror in her eyes with his camera. He sexually assaulted her and, in a bizarre display of cruelty, forced her to sit with him and watch television while she was still tied up.
Later that night, Glatman forced Judith into his car and drove her out into the dark expanse of the Southern California desert. He led her to believe he was going to release her, but once they were past Thousand Palms, he stopped. There, under the desert sky, he looped a rope around her ankles and her neck, strangling her with brutal efficiency. He took more photographs of her lifeless body before burying her in a shallow grave he dug with one of her own shoes, about 160 feet off a highway four and a half miles west of Indio.
Back in Los Angeles, Judith's roommates grew frantic. The phone number Glatman had left was fake. They reported her missing, but with little to go on, the trail went cold. A few days later, Judith's estranged husband was granted full custody of their daughter, unaware that the young mother would never have the chance to fight for her child again. In December 1957, her skeletal remains were discovered by chance, but they were not identified for months, remaining a "Jane Doe."
The truth of Judith's fate came to light more than a year later, in October 1958. Glatman was caught by a highway patrolman as he was attempting to kidnap his fourth victim, Lorraine Vigil, who bravely fought back. In custody, Glatman confessed to murdering three women. He led investigators to a toolbox containing his most damning evidence: rolls of film with horrifying, sequential photos of his victims, including Judith, documenting their terror from the initial "photo shoot" to their final moments. He also led police to the desert locations where he had left his victims.
Harvey Murray Glatman, who became known as "The Glamour Girl Slayer" and "The Lonely Hearts Killer," was also responsible for the murders of Shirley Ann Bridgeford and Ruth Mercado. He was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to death. Glatman reportedly accepted his fate, telling an appeals board, "I only want to die." On September 18, 1959, he was executed in the gas chamber at San Quentin State Prison, bringing an end to his reign of terror. Though he was not formally tried for Judith's murder, his detailed confession and the photographic evidence left no doubt as to his guilt.
