A Cold-blooded Killer Who Was Just A Child

Happy New Year! Let’s start the new year right with perhaps the most horrifying murder in the history of the valley. The pre-meditated killing was carried out by a 14-year-old kid right here in La Crescenta. I’ve covered this story before but it’s been many years, and the chilling tale is worth a retell. 

The Jensen family lived on a quiet street in La Crescenta in the 1930s. Their son Richard was called “Red” because of his bright red curly hair. Red was in constant trouble with the law, stealing anything he could get his hands on. The problem was so constant that by 1939 Red had spent nine of his 14 years in reform schools. One of the school psychiatrists said Red “seems to have a peculiar aptitude for calculating and planning his misdeeds in a cold and criminal manner.” His cold planning took a darker turn on Aug. 22, 1939.

Red was just two months out of his latest stint in a juvenile correctional facility. He was back at his parents’ house and rekindling friendships with the neighborhood kids. Billy Williams, a 13-year-old living next door, had the bad judgement to jokingly call Red an “ex-con.” The obvious solution to the insult in Red’s mind was to kill Billy Williams.

Red dug a grave in his backyard, then invited Billy over to his house to play. The two boys retreated to a basement room below Red’s house. There Red locked the door and coldly choked Billy with a wire, stabbed him twice in the chest and crushed his skull with a hammer.

Red’s mom was upstairs, heard the commotion and wanted to come down to investigate. Encountering the locked door she demanded Red open up. Red opened the door just a crack, peered out with his blood-covered face and calmly told his mom, “I just killed Billy Williams.” Mom started screaming and Red decided it was time to go. He pushed past her and took off on his bicycle. Police caught up with him the next day. He was unconcerned about his crime. 

“Naw, I ain’t sorry,” he told the police. “I just pegged him when he called me an ex-con. He got what was coming to him.”

The trial made national news. He was calmly unrepentant, obviously a psychopath. He played solitaire during the court hearings. He was deemed insane and so would not be tried for murder.

In case you think “soft on crime” is a new thing he was committed for only 12 years. Despite being deemed a troublemaker and achieving three escapes, the doctors decided he was sane enough to be released. 

“The boy at the present time is not a menace,” they declared. But they were wrong.

Almost immediately, Red acquired a car and rigged it as a murder machine. He set up a forward-facing rifle in the back seat, and hooked a wire to the trigger. With a pull of the end of the wire under the front seat, the rifle would fire a bullet into anyone sitting in the passenger seat.

He went out cruising for hitchhikers. He picked up a 16-year-old boy and killed him with his rigged-up gun. He dumped the body where no one would find it. The boy was listed as missing.

His next hitchhiking victim was a Marine sergeant who proved to be tougher than the 16-year-old. Red pulled the trigger of the gun but the bullet hit a spring in the seat, only stunning the Marine. Red pulled him out of the car, beat his head with a hammer, shot him in the chest with a shotgun and left him for dead. But the Marine was not dead. When he came to, he crawled a mile to a motel. He was able to describe Red to the police and they soon picked him up. He freely admitted his crime and even showed police how the gun worked.

This time the insanity plea didn’t work. La Crescenta’s Red Jensen was convicted and given the death penalty. He died in San Quentin’s gas chamber in February 1955.