The Westin St. Francis Hotel as it is today

A TRIP TO THE ST. FRANCIS, FEBRUARY 1996

by

David B. Pearson

Lets see...

Yeah. There it is. The St. Francis Hotel, now called the Westin St. Francis.

Gorgeous lobby.

There's the elevator.

In.

Black buttons.

12th floor.

Out.

Wow. Swank green paneling in the hallway, same as it was in the '20s.

Get the Yallop book. Inside cover. Diagram.

Go to the right, then turn left.

Short corridor.

Halfway down. To the right.

Room 1219.

It's just a hotel room. No special markings about it or anything.

Nothing saying what happened.

It's so small. Half the size of my room at the Holiday Inn.

It's February, and it's hot.

What must it have been like in September, 1922?

No air-conditioning.

No doubt about it, those windows HAD to be open. One couldn't breathe

otherwise. And if something had happened in that room, like a woman

screaming, everybody in the hotel could have heard it.

Common sense.

Roscoe Arbuckle was innocent.

Nothing. Not the eloquence of Arbuckle, Buster Keaton, Minta Durfee,

Gavin McNab, David Yallop, Robert Young, Jr, Stuart Oderman, David

MacLeod, Andy Edmonds, or that third jury hammers in this fact quite

like a short trip to the St. Francis.

Go look.

It is just a hotel room.

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