Almost literally to the very end, Diane Wells denied she had had an affair with Johnny Warren.
She and Warren had been charged with the murder of her husband Cecil, and there were obvious reasons she wanted to distance herself from that allegation. It was 1953 Jim Crow America, and the press salivated over a liaison between a white woman and a black man, both of whom were married – Diane the fifth, much younger wife of a rich businessman, and Warren to a pregnant white woman.
Fairbanks US Attorney Ted Stevens – and the Fairbanks PD and the FBI – focused on the idea of a lover’s conspiracy, and Diane knew that Warren had some rather innocent “love letters” she had sent him. She also knew Cecil’s family had hired two off-duty Seattle police detectives to look into the case, and run lie detector tests on Warren.
She was already being harshly judged in print, and Warren would have been even more aware of the situation: he had tried to avoid extradition back to Alaska because of what he called a “wave of prejudice” against him. Both were concerned about the trial, which was potentially a death penalty case.
So, Diane vehemently denied any “intimate relations” with Warren, even when he gave a detailed statement to police in Oakland, California, inferring that it was she who first “gave him the eye.”
It’s common in high-profile criminal cases for opposing legal teams to have their clients, or even themselves, speak exclusively to reporters to get their version of events out there, and to hopefully influence potential members of the upcoming jury.
When I was looking though the archives at the Main Library in San Francisco, I came across a San Francisco Examiner article from November 8, 1953 billed as an exclusive with Walter Sczudlo, Diane’s lawyer in Fairbanks.
Alaska Widow Admits ‘Seeing’ Jazz Drummer ran the headline, though it quickly noted that Diane had insisted she was never intimate with Warren, despite his statement about their “love trysts.”
Sczudlo explained that Diane told him she met Warren in her apartment (at the Northward Building) only once, after he had insisted on seeing her. She thought he was friend of Cecil, but when she found out he was not, sent him away.
“When Warren arrived, she was surprised to see who it was,” he said, explaining that Warren had told Diane he was “having marital difficulties.” This must have changed her mind about him, though their several further meetings were “almost always in public,” Sczudlo noted. Note that he said “almost always.”
“To show you there is nothing to this,” Sczudlo further revealed that Clara Warren had told friends about her husband demanding Diane’s help as part of a plan to make her jealous. It didn’t seem to have worked, and Clara told reporters she was going to stand by her husband.
But “demanded help”? Was that particular word used by Sczudlo to hint that Warren could be an aggressive, even violent man?
The Examiner reporter asked Sczudlo about Diane being released on bail despite facing a murder charge – as Warren had also been, due to a legal quirk of Alaska then being a US territory. He however replied: “They let her go because they haven’t enough evidence against her.”
The article of course featured an overview of the investigation, Sczudlo saying “bitterly” that “the police here don’t seem to be making any further investigation,” regarding Diane’s statement that two men had broken into the apartment, assaulting her and killing Cecil.
Sczudlo finished by saying that Diane had told him that she and Cecil were happily married and she had no idea who might have killed him, but that she would find out “if it took the rest of my life.”
Sadly, that life ended just a few months later, and there was a confession of sorts – at least to the affair – in one of the notes Diane left:
“For one thing — I am guilty too, for ever seeing Warren, if Warren is guilty. One thing for sure is Cecil is dead, and I must be the cause of it, one way or another.”
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