DENVER FIRE BUG - 1935

Warren Cramer under arrest

DENVER, Aug. 24. - A maniacal firebug terrorized Denver tonight, after he had kindled three fires in the $6,000,000 City Hall, where he endangered art treasures, and eluded a ring of officers to start a later fire in an office building. 

- The New York Times

The Life and Death of Warren Cramer

By Vinny Del Giudice
Denver Fire Journal

Warren Cramer was just plain bad.

As a teenager, he confessed to an arson spree in Denver. As an adult, he confessed to a murder in San Francisco -- and was executed in the gas chamber.

On Aug. 26, 1935, Cramer, 17, son of a prominent dentist and attorney from Oakland, California, confessed to setting 20 fires across Denver in five days, including blazes at a Catholic cathedral, two Catholic churches, City Hall and police headquarters.

"I got a thrill out of it," Detective Sergeant Walter Fox quoted the youth as saying, according to an Associated Press story printed in the Southeast Missourian newspaper. "It was fun, especially last night when I started a fire in police headquarters."

Cramer said he used a stolen bicycle to move from fire to fire.

Police caught him at a night club phone booth.

At first, police had suspected a "religious fanatic" or "Nazi sympathizer" with setting the church fires, according to a United Press story printed in the Telegraph-Herald of Dubuque, Iowa.

A headline in the Herald Journal of Spartanburg, South Carolina, read: "DENVER FEARFUL OF FIRE MANIAC."

The boy's father, Dr. Harry Cramer, said his son served 10 months at the Preston industrial school for petty theft and had repeatedly run away from home since he was 12.

Dr. Cramer also said the boy's mother, who died shortly after his birth, "was insane" and "this undoubtedly explains his actions," according to an Associated Press story in the Lawrence Journal-World of Kansas.

Cramer went onto an "eight-year career of thievery, arson and jail breaking" and was executed in California's gas chamber at San Quentin on May 14, 1943, for the slaying of Ernest Saxton, a San Francisco drug store clerk in 1942, according to a United Press story printed in the Bend Bulletin of Oregon.

At the end, San Quentin Warden Clinton Duffy described Cramer as a “brilliant” man who thought he had a “rotten streak in his system which he couldn’t control.”

His last words in the gas chamber were: "I can't smell anything yet ... It smells like rotten eggs," according to the book "Last Words of the Executed" by Robert K. Elder and Studs Terkel.


Uncontrollable Mental Quirk

In a Sept. 30, 1935 editorial, the Longmont Times-Call opined on Cramer's case:

Young Cramer was pronounced insane by physicians at the Colorado Psychopathic Hospital. He readily admits that he has an uncontrollable mental quirk in relation to arson and theft, while at the same time strictly contending that he was born for some great mission in the land; is qualified to formulate “rules of life” for other people and has many talents including wonderful ability as a singer.

Cramer is fairly well satisfied to go to the asylum as it will give him an opportunity to study languages. He says: “I want to become a great linguist, one who can trace every tongue back to its origin and speak or understand all the dialects known to man.” Then after he gets out he will, so he says, have developed a sense of power over persons who speak and understand only one language.

He does not seem to appreciate the fact that many people get along quite well with one language, if they behave themselves, and don't talk too much.

Arizona Republic

Details of 1942 Murder Case

Crim. No. 4454. In Bank. Jan. 29, 1943.]

THE PEOPLE, Respondent, v. WARREN CRAMER, Appellant.

COUNSEL

Warren Cramer, in pro. per., for Appellant.

Earl Warren, Attorney General, David H. Lener, Deputy Attorney General, Matthew Brady, District Attorney, and Leslie C. Gillen, Assistant District Attorney, for Respondent.

OPINION

THE COURT.

This is an automatic appeal from a judgment of conviction of first degree murder imposing the death penalty on the defendant. (See § 1239, Pen. Code.)

The District Attorney of the City and County of San Francisco filed an information charging defendant with the murder of one Ernest Saxton on July 5, 1942, and with prior convictions of robbery and grand theft. [1] At the time set for arraignment, defendant expressed a desire to discharge his attorney and to enter a plea of guilty, but his counsel, over defendant's objection, suggested that a doubt existed as to defendant's sanity. Further proceedings under the information were suspended and, a jury having been waived, a hearing was had before the court to inquire into defendant's sanity. To assist it in the determination of this issue, the court appointed three eminent psychiatrists to examine defendant and to submit findings. An exhaustive hearing was had at which evidence was adduced tending to show insanity in certain of the defendant's ancestors and also prior adjudications of insanity against the defendant himself. There is also evidence of defendant's subsequent discharge as sane and, in addition, his own testimony that he had made a study of insanity and had successfully feigned its symptoms on prior occasions in order to avoid the penal punishment that otherwise would have resulted for earlier misdeeds. Defendant's testimony reveals a detailed knowledge of insanity and its symptoms.

One of the experts testified that it is possible to feign certain [21 Cal. 2d 533] symptoms of insanity and stated it as his opinion that upon former occasions the defendant had "accomplished his purpose of being declared insane" by feigning some of such symptoms. All three experts testified that defendant is sane and knows right from wrong. In addition, the chief psychiatrist at San Quentin penitentiary was called as a witness by defendant's counsel. He testified that on numerous occasions between 1937 and 1942, when the defendant was an inmate of the institution, he had opportunity to observe and examine him, and he was of the opinion that the defendant was not insane, but represented a self-willed, spoiled and undisciplined individual.

The four doctors agreed that the defendant was of superior intelligence, could rationalize as to what he had done, was capable of fully understanding and appreciating the significance and seriousness of his trial on the murder charge, and was wholly capable of rationally defending himself. With this evidence before it, as well as the defendant's testimony wherein he reveals himself to be highly intelligent, the trial court properly determined that the defendant was "presently sane" and "comprehends the nature and object of these proceedings and as a consequence of that is able to make a proper defense."

Upon arraignment for plea the defendant stated that he would represent himself, and requested his counsel to withdraw from the case. The court, however, in order to protect defendant's rights, requested counsel to remain and give any advice required in the presentation of the defense. Defendant thereupon entered a plea of guilty to the murder charge and admitted the prior offenses.

[2] The evidence addressed to the degree of the crime showed that the deceased, a drug store attendant, was shot by the defendant while the latter was attempting to rob his store. Prior to the shooting, defendant had purchased the gun from a taxicab driver and had stolen the automobile used in fleeing from the scene of the crime. He was apprehended later when the stolen automobile was recognized by policemen. Shortly after his arrest, defendant made and signed two statements, which the evidence discloses to have been voluntary, in which he set forth the details surrounding commission of the homicide and wherein he freely admitted his guilt. The evidence amply supports the judgment determining the murder to be [21 Cal. 2d 534] of the first degree and imposing the death penalty. (See §§ 189, 190, Pen. Code.)

The judgment is affirmed.

Documentation of execution