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A Lovely Girl
The Tragedy of Olga Duncan and the Trial of One of California’s Most Notorious Killers
Chronicles the overlapping stories of two families that collide in the vortex of one of California’s most notorious murder cases.
The Murder:
Few murders in California history so raised the public interest as did the Duncan case. In the fall of 1958, a young nurse, the pregnant wife of a local attorney, meets a violent death on a lonely road. The victim is Olga Duncan, a lovely, quiet girl from Canada without an enemy in the world—except for her new mother-in-law. Elizabeth Duncan, a well-dressed, matronly woman, spends most of her time doting on her thirty-year-old son, Frank, a successful criminal defense attorney whom she calls “Mama’s little boy.” She vehemently opposes his marriage to Olga and secretly attempts to get it annulled. When strategies of harassment don’t get rid of her son’s new wife, she turns to stronger measures.
And just when you think the story can’t get any weirder, the trial begins. The public lines up daily at 4:30 a.m. to secure seats in the courtroom. Reporters from all over the country descend on the small town to cover the sensational story. Olga’s lawyer husband assists in his mother’s defense. Frank is his mother’s only defense witness against the charge that she hired two young men to murder his own wife and unborn child. Mrs. Duncan calls the prosecution and DA liars. She claims that she is the victim. Then there’s the incest that District Attorney Roy Gustafson hints at throughout the trial.
The Memoir:
Bob Holt, author Deborah’s witty, temperamental, crime reporter father, is a well-known and esteemed journalist. He covers Olga Duncan’s murder for the local newspaper, from the young nurse’s disappearance through the trials of her accused killers. Daddy has no filter, and his spellbinding nightly accounts of the events described in the true crime procedural chapters feed ten-year-old Debby’s nagging worry that someday she could be murdered like Olga. Late at night, when she hears the clicking of typewriter keys coming from her father’s study, she leaves her bed and creeps down the hall to ask too many questions.
The Research:
The author relied on numerous sources to recreate the investigation and trial scenes: over 5,000 pages of court transcripts; news articles from four newspapers; her father’s files and personal recollections; his weekly columns about their oddball family; interviews with the daughter of the Santa Barbara detective who broke the case; letters Olga Duncan wrote home to her parents; and an exclusive review of the unpublished memoir about the investigation and trial written by the young district attorney, Roy Gustafson, who prosecuted the accused murderers.
Excerpt from Part III- The Trial, February 24, 1959
When I think back to Elizabeth Duncan’s trial, I hear my father’s voice—his dramatic, profanity-laced, sometimes humorous stories about witness testimony and crazy antics in the courtroom.I read every word of his newspaper articles, and I scrutinized the front-page photos of all the trial participants. But his nightly accounts brought the bizarre and brutal characters involved in Olga Duncan’s murder to life around our dining-room table. I hung on every detail of his spellbinding tales, and although I’d never met any of these people, I knew them all very well.
Elizabeth “Ma” Duncan
Meet The Characters
Olga Duncan:
Olga was a young surgical nurse working at Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara. She was twenty-nine years old, pregnant, and married to Frank Duncan when she disappeared. Weeks before her brutal murder, she expressed concern to her friends and family about the state of her marriage. Olga thought her new “mother-in-law from hell” was crazy. Elizabeth Duncan:
Frank’s mother hated her new daughter-in-law. She thought Olga wasn’t “good enough” for her son, and she insisted that Frank move back home to live with her. She attempted to have Olga and Frank’s marriage annulled. What she did next was shocking.
Frank Duncan:
Frank, Olga’s husband and Elizabeth’s son, was an up-and-coming criminal defense attorney in Santa Barbara. After his marriage to Olga, he continued to live with his mother and neglect his pregnant wife, although he visited Olga at her apartment and insisted that he loved her very much.Roy Gustafson:
Gustafson was a young, idealistic Ventura County District Attorney with eyes on the governor’s seat. The accused killer’s famous LA defense attorney referred to Gustafson as a “hick” the night before the trial began. The DA took Olga’s murder personally, and he slowly built his case against her killers in the most important case of his career.Detective Charlie Thompson:
Thompson worked tirelessly for the Santa Barbara Police Department to investigate Olga Duncan’s disappearance. He was on a two-week suspension for calling his lieutenant a son of a bitch when Olga disappeared. But when he returned to duty, Charlie ultimately uncovered the link that broke the case and led to the prosecution of Olga’s brutal killers.Bob Holt:
The author’s father was a well-renowned newspaper reporter for the Ventura County Star Free-Press. He was the lead reporter for the Olga Duncan murder trial, delivering first-hand accounts of the story, from the discovery of Olga’s body to testimony and antics inside the courtroom. Bob also wrote a whimsical column chronicling small town 1950’s life in the paper.Deborah Holt Larkin, author:
Debby, a ten-year-old girl obsessed with Olga’s disappearance, lived with her crime-reporting father in the small, beach-side community of Ventura, California, where Olga’s brutally-beaten body was discovered. Her father, Bob Holt, was the lead crime reporter for the local newspaper at the time of Olga’s murder. And Daddy had no filter. She was a child growing up in a more innocent time, coming to terms with a brutal crime with the simple faith that you can’t hurt someone and get away with it. Young Debby read her father’s daily headline stories about the brutal murder and hounded him with questions about the crime while living the idyllic life her father wrote about in his columns. She wanted to learn more about the murderers because she was afraid of them. Debby’s life was forever influenced by Olga’s murder.Praise for the Book
