The Jean Ellroy Files: Alva Herd and Easton Spaulding

Alva ‘Al’ Herd was one of the most prominent Los Angeles based businessmen of the twentieth century. He was born in Glenwood Springs, Colorado in 1906 and was named after Alva Adams, three times Governor of Colorado and the father of Alva B. Adams, who became Senator for Colorado. Herd moved to Oakland first and then Los Angeles in 1921. By the early 1930s he was operating a successful car dealership in Sunset Boulevard and La Brea Avenue. Herd conducted car auctions in four states and became one of the biggest car dealers in Southern California. But by the 1940s he was broke. I spoke to Herd’s son Alan ‘Scotty’ Herd, who explained that the business ultimately failed as Herd’s customers kept passing him bad cheques. In 1947, Herd switched to real estate and made his second fortune. He never needed to change professions again.

The Jean Ellroy Connection

Al Herd’s closest friend was Easton Ewing Spaulding. The name might sound familiar to readers of this website, and anyone who has read my biography Love Me Fierce in Danger: The Life of James Ellroy, as Spaulding was the first husband of Jean Ellroy, the mother of James Ellroy. Spaulding was Scotty Herd’s godfather, who in turn named his son, Easton Alan Herd, after him. Scotty gave me a vivid account of Herd and Spaulding’s friendship and business partnership. Herd was the businessman and Spaulding was more of an investor. Spaulding came from money, his family fortune was in real estate, and he invested in Herd’s business as he needed a sense of identity. As a car dealer, Herd had provided ‘exotic’ cars to celebrities. In real estate, he also catered to the rich and famous. Herd became a celebrity himself. His IMDB page states he was a guest on The Mike Douglas Show. According to Scotty, there were many more media appearances. He also counted Hollywood stars, such as Cary Grant, as his friends. Herd and Spaulding moved in the glitziest of Hollywood circles. Spaulding’s fourth and final marriage, after his brief marriage to Jean Ellroy was annulled or dissolved, was to Emily Hensel. Emily’s sister Betty was dating Cary Grant at the time of Emily and Spaulding’s wedding.

Easton Herd wrote to me, ‘As for my Grandfather (Al Herd), he was a a pretty good salesman, dated a few starlets and married several times.  So he would have been the type to meet girls and introduce them to his friends like Easton.’ This is intriguing as Jean Ellroy was a starlet, unlike ‘the Black Dahlia’ Elizabeth Short who has often been labelled a starlet but there isn’t any evidence that she had acting roles or ambitions. Jean was living in Chicago, pursuing her nursing career, when in December 1938, she won a beauty contest and flew to LA and took a screentest. Nothing came of it and she switched back to nursing. Jean didn’t have any real interest in acting. However, she married Easton Spaulding in November 1940. It’s possible that she met Spaulding through Al Herd during her brief dalliance in Hollywood.

Herd’s career wasn’t without controversy. His obituary states he ‘earned national publicity as one of the first to use creative financing packages when inflation pushed up housing prices in the 1970s’. This will hardly endear his memory to many Americans still reeling from the sub-prime mortgage crisis. Spaulding’s granddaughter Catherine Judd sent me a series of letters written by her mother Anne Kennedy. Anne had some contact with Herd through her father, although her description of him is not flattering. She describes him as her father’s ‘psychopath friend’, ‘really a shady character’ and ‘infamous’.

Jean Ellroy was murdered in El Monte in June 1958. She was on a date with a man who, due to his olive complexion, became known as ‘the Swarthy Man’. He raped and murdered Jean and has never been identified. Jean’s son James Ellroy became one of the greatest crime writers of his generation. Now don’t misunderstand me. I’m not suggesting that Al Herd could have been ‘the Swarthy Man’. He was too old and too pale. He did have a similar slim build and widow’s peak style hairline to ‘the Swarthy Man’. However, in these true crime style investigations you can’t just take the facts that suit your narrative and discard the others. Al Herd died, aged 91, in 1997.

I do believe, however, that the more we can find out about Jean Ellroy and her mysterious, secretive life the closer we will come to understanding and perhaps solving her murder. She moved in celebrity circles, but turned her back on Hollywood to pursue her passion for nursing in the small city of El Monte. She had only lived in El Monte for a matter of months before she was murdered.

We can’t allow her to be forgotten.

If you enjoyed this article, why not treat yourself or someone you care for to a copy of Love Me Fierce in Danger: The Life of James Ellroy (Bloomsbury: 2023).

Postscript: Below is a promotional video of Al Herd showing two young women around his properties. There’s no sound and the clumsy editing suggests the footage may never have been finished for any form of promotional release, but that only makes it more weirdly mesmerising. I found the footage on the website of filmmaker Raymond De Felitta, whose father author Frank De Felitta makes a cameo appearance in Love Me Fierce in Danger. De Felitta has this to say about the footage, ‘Strangely, even in black and white LA then looks like LA now–scrubby, mephitic, debilitating. And that’s in the good neighbourhood…’