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A brief article in the June 24, 1906, edition of the Sacramento Daily Union announced what would become a confusing murder case: “The police are investigating the sudden death of Elizabeth Brandrup at (South San Francisco). The body of the woman was discovered by her daughter, and there were marks about the throat which gave rise to the theory of strangulation.”
Brandrup, a divorced mother with two daughters, worked at the Linden Hotel in the Baden area of South San Francisco. On the 22, her body was discovered by her youngest daughter in a storeroom at the hotel. She had clearly been strangled, but the doctor performing the subsequent autopsy had difficulty determining the time of death – it could have been anywhere between one hour and ten hours previous to that autopsy.
Based on the inquiry testimony of the youngest daughter, suspicion soon fell on George Jones, a native of Hawaii and plasterer working at the hotel.
At that inquiry, which happened on the 27, Jones denied any responsibility for Brandrup’s death, but at the presentation of prosecution testimony, the San Francisco Call newspaper reported that such testimony “told heavily against him (and) beads of perspiration shone on his forehead and dampened his curling black hair.”
The most damning of that testimony came from hotel staff. A chambermaid had attempted to enter Jones’s room at about noon but was rebuffed by Jones. The murdered woman’s younger daughter, who also worked at the hotel, overheard this exchange and testified to the conversation at the inquiry. This same daughter also claimed Jones had been seen in a hotel hallway “without hat or coat and his eyes staring” and repeating the cryptic phrase, “she didn’t have a knife or a hatchet either when she did it.”
Physical evidence was also clearly against Jones. The newspaper, the San Francisco Call, stated that Jones’s room, Room 7, “…resembled a slaughterhouse. Blood spotted the floor and bed. The bedclothes were torn and twisted. Everything in the room had the appearance of disorder. On the floor…was found…the murdered woman’s hat.”
Jones’s character was also called into question. His room was described as full of empty liquor bottles and “nude pictures…and dime novels.” Brandrup, however, was painted as a paragon of virtue, although “…occasionally seen to drink beer with the lodgers.”
After the conclusion of the inquiry testimony, murder charges were brought against Jones.
The trial was swift. Similar testimony was presented, although Jones did not take the stand in his own defense.
The Sacramento Daily Union, who had started the presentation of the crime to the world so briefly, would conclude the story equally quickly: “The trial of (George) Jones for the murder of Elizabeth Brandrup at the Linden House at South San Francisco on June 22 ended to-day in the conviction of Jones. The jury stayed out six hours, agreed on a verdict of murder in the first degree and fixed the penalty of life imprisonment.”
No motive was ever told.
Nothing more was heard from Jones until February 1940, when a small article in The Times stated that Jones, who had been paroled in 1921, appealed to the California governor for the granting of a pardon. I was unable to find a trace of whether such action was taken or not.
