OK, here's a strange and noirish tale from 1940. As the caption says, this is "Chloe Davis, 11-year-old daughter of Mrs Lolita Davis, who is thought to have killed three of her children before being hammered to death by Chloe".
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There's quite a bit about this case online, so I'll try to pick out some of the details. On April 4, 1940, a bloodied 11-year-old Chloe Dibble Davis went to a neighbor's house to phone her father and ask him to come home immediately. He returned to his house at 1211 W 58th Place from a nearby grocery store where he worked as manager to find most of his family dead or dying. As Chloe led him through the house, she showed him her 3-year-old brother, Marquis (sometimes referred to as Mark), and 7-year-old sister, Deborah Ann, on the kitchen floor. Both had been bludgeoned. Chloe then pushed her father to the hallway where her mother, Lolita Davis, was lying dead on a mattress after being bludgeoned and burned. Finally, Chloe took her father to the bathroom where her 10-year-old sister, Daphne, was found with blood and brain matter splattered on the walls, floor and ceiling. At this point, Frank Barton Davis ran into the street screaming. Chloe followed and told her father to "brace up". The two younger girls were still alive when police arrived, but unconscious. Both died soon after reaching hospital, although Daphne apparently told doctors that Chloe had carried out the attacks.
After being treated for her superficial head wound, Chloe was held on suspicion of murdering her mother and siblings. The police and their psychiatrist, Dr Paul De River, were surprised by the detached way Chloe recounted the details of the killings. Chloe claimed that her mother believed that her children were inhabited by demons. Her mother had then beaten three of her siblings with a hammer and slashed her own wrists. When Chloe discovered her brother moaning in pain on the kitchen floor, she asked her mother is she should put him out of his misery, which she did. Chloe's mother was still alive at this point, and she asked Chloe to keep hitting her until she could no longer talk. Only when the house went quiet did Chloe calmly go to the neighbor's house to call her father.
Chloe is described as having above average intelligence and behaving like a 15- or 16-year-old, but it was her disconnectedness that confused investigators. When she was taken back to her home from the police station for a re-enactment, Chloe is said to have waved at her schoolmates on the lawn. She then took the police around the house, coolly explaining what had happened, and stopping to point at some books, telling them "I'm a bookworm. I read all the time."
Despite early suspicions that Chloe had carried out the attacks, Judge W Turney Fox ruled that Chloe's strange behavior and participation had been due to her mother's domination. Although he accepted that Chloe had beaten her mother and brother, the coroner's jury determined that both had died from their original injuries. Her father, Frank, also admitted that his wife had been to see two doctors and a psychiatrist for her illness, and had asked him to buy some chloroform to pour on the children when the demons came to torture them. In the end, Judge Fox ruled that Chloe was not responsible for her actions, and that they were carried out under the complete domination of her mother. He then ordered that Chloe should live with her father at the home of relatives or friends approved by the probation office.
Chloe Dibble Davis died in Indiana in 1987. She married three times, and had three children by her first husband. Her last marriage was only a few months before her death.
Various pictures from
derangedlacrimes.com
Further reading:
Deranged L.A. Crimes - Sole Survivor
The Mind of a Murderer: Privileged Access to the Demons that Drive Extreme Violence by Katherine M. Ramsland
Beyond Bizarre: Chloe Davis & Her Murder-Coaching Mom - 1940
Chloe Dibble Davis on familyorigins.com
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