Barbara Graham

Her ex-son-in-law was 74-year-old Luther B. Scherer (1879-1957), a multi-millionaire who was well known through his ownership of various gambling clubs in locations such as Palm Springs and casinos in Las Vegas.

It is speculated that he had deep ties to various crime syndicates.

Monahan's daughter Iris had divorced Scherer two years prior and received the Burbank residence in the divorce settlement.

Iris shortly thereafter married a different man and moved to New York, leaving her mother, Mabel Monohan, to reside in their former home.

Monohan and Scherer had remained close friends after the divorce and their continued friendship piqued public interest, gossip, and rumors that would later prove deadly.

Hortense Ford Wood (1906–1989) was of Portuguese (Azorean) descent on her father's side, the original family name having been Furtado.

When Graham was two, her mother, who was still in her late teens, was arrested and sent to reform school and Graham was placed in foster care in which she alleged that she was beaten and treated poorly.

Upon release at age 21, Hortense refused to allow Graham to live with her.

Graham was raised by strangers and extended family and, although she was intelligent, she had a limited education.

As a teenager, she was arrested for vagrancy and sentenced to serve time at Ventura State School for Girls, the same reform school where her mother had been.

She married Harry Kielhamer (1913–1993), a U.S. Coast Guardsman, in 1940, and enrolled in a business college and soon had her first two children.

Barbara Elaine "Bonnie" Wood Graham (née Ford; June 26, 1923 – June 3, 1955) was an American criminal convicted of murder.

She was executed in the gas chamber at San Quentin Prison on the same day as two convicted accomplices, Jack Santo and Emmett Perkins, all of whom were involved in a robbery that led to the murder of an elderly widow.

Nicknamed "Bloody Babs" by the press, Graham was the third woman in California to be executed by gas.

On February 23, 1925, Hortense, still unwed, gave birth to a second daughter, Claire Elizabeth.

On October 10, 1929, at the age of 23, Hortense married Joseph Wood (1901-1930) in Alameda.

Hortense's, along with Barbara's and Claire's, surnames were changed to Wood.

Hortense and Joseph's son, Joseph Robert Wood, was born on March 27, 1930, however Joseph Sr. died on January 19, 1930, at the age of 28 before his son's birth.

Released from reform school in 1939, Graham tried to make a new start for herself.

The marriage was not a success and, by 1942, she was divorced.

Harry Kielhamer was awarded custody of their two sons.

Over the next several years, she was married twice more, but each of these attempts at a more traditional lifestyle failed.

After this string of failures, Graham is said to have become a worker in the sex trade, as her mother had before her: reportedly, during World War II, she plied her trade as what was known in some circles as a "seagull", or a prostitute who "flocked" in pairs or groups near naval bases.

It is supposed that Graham began working near the Oakland Army Base, Oakland Naval Supply Depot, and Alameda Naval Air Station.

In 1942, she and other "seagulls" traveled to Long Beach, California and San Diego.

She was arrested on vice charges in these naval cities and in San Pedro, California.

At 22, with her good looks, red hair, and sex appeal, she worked for a time in San Francisco for a brothel madam named Sally Stanford.

She soon became involved in gambling and illegal drug circles, cultivating a number of friends who were ex-convicts and known career criminals.

She served a five-year sentence for perjury as a false alibi witness for two petty criminals, serving her sentence at the California Women's State Prison at Tehachapi, California.

After her stint in state prison, Graham moved to Reno, Nevada and then Tonopah, Nevada.

She obtained work in a hospital and as a waitress, but soon got on a bus for Los Angeles.

There, she got a room on Hollywood Boulevard and returned to prostitution.

In 1953, she married Henry Graham, who worked as a bartender at one of her frequent haunts.

With him she had a third child, named Tommy.

Henry Graham was addicted to illegal drugs and known as a hardened but low-level criminal.

Through him, Barbara met his friends Jack Santo and Emmett "The Weasel" Perkins, both with criminal records.

She started an affair with Perkins, who told her about a 64-year-old widow, Mabel Monohan, who was alleged to keep a large amount of cash and jewelry in her home in Burbank, California.

Monohan was a retired vaudeville performer who had previously worked the Keith-Albee circuit.

Her story of adult criminal activity is told in the highly fictionalized 1958 film I Want to Live!, in which she was portrayed by Susan Hayward, who won the Academy Award for Best Actress.

Graham was born Barbara Elaine Ford in Oakland, California to young, unwed mother Hortense Ford from Santa Cruz, who earned her living through prostitution.