The Big Sleep | Criminal Podcast | Forensic Files

Raymond Chandler: I don't think I ever, in my own mind, think anybody's a villain.
You don't find anyone, really, that's all bad. Phoebe Judge: This is the only surviving recording of crime writer Raymond Chandler's voice.
It's from a 1958 interview, a year before he died. He's a little hard to understand because, as the story goes, he was extremely drunk.
He was drunk a lot, especially near the end of his life. But what he said here is that he doesn't ever think anybody's a villain.
You don't find anyone that's all bad. Raymond Chandler: ... It seems to me that the real mystery is not who killed Sir John
in his study, but what the situation really was, what the people were after, what sort
of people they were. Phoebe Judge: "It seems to me that the real mystery is not who killed Sir John in the
study, but what the situation really was, what the people were after, what sort of people
they were." [Music.] He wrote seven crime novels, including The Long Goodbye and The Big Sleep, and introduced
the world to Philip Marlowe, a clever, hard-drinking Los Angeles private detective.
Marlowe doesn't have the genius of Sherlock Holmes or tuxedos like James Bond. He's just a guy.
A little bit philosophical and a little bit flirtatious, but always very, very calm.
As Marlowe says in the novel Playback, "Guns never settle anything. They're just a fast curtain to a bad second act."
With a writer as big as Chandler, with archives at Oxford and UCLA, you'd think there wouldn't
be much left to discover about his life. But as Lauren Spohrer found out, there was one last mystery.
And the only people who could solve it were a couple of 70-year-olds, in love with each
other and obsessed with Chandler. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. [Music.] Annie Thiel: He said Los Angeles had the personality of a paper cup.
Loren Latker: Yeah. And I think at some point, he also said that somebody had the personality of the inside
of a shoebox. So... Lauren Spohrer: Loren Latker's been reading Chandler since he was 17 years old.
And he's now 72, so a long time. Here he is talking to his wife, Annie Thiel. Annie Thiel: What about the one about the blonde that caused the bishop to kick the
stained glass window? Loren Latker: She was a blonde that'd make a bishop kick in a stained glass window.
Yeah, that's his. That's Chandler. Annie Thiel: Or the one as noticeable as a tarantula on an angel food cake.
Loren Latker: He was a master at simile. Lauren Spohrer: This is my favorite thing about Chandler.
He wrote crazy sentences, like, "I belonged in Idle Valley like a pearl onion on a banana
split." Or, "I felt like an amputated leg." Loren Latker: He had a way with words, definitely.
Lauren Spohrer: Loren has always been a Chandler fan, but Annie says she was more of a casual
fan before she met Loren. Annie Thiel: He was completely mesmerized in Chandler and devoted to him.
And I'm devoted to Loren, so [laughs] it was a way of really wanting to understand how
Loren thought. It was like, okay, if I can really understand and read enough Chandler, I'll know how he
thinks, too. And then I kind of stepped into Loren's Chandler world. Lauren Spohrer: Loren's Chandler world doesn't just involve re-reading the novels and biographies.
It's hands-on. He's photographed all the spots in Los Angeles where Chandler lived, and all the places that he wrote about.
And he's tracked down anyone he can find who knew Chandler. Annie Thiel: The first person that we met with was Dorothy, his secretary.
And she was 82 and had cancer, at the time. Loren Latker: I had Annie call her up because Annie's got much better people skills than
I do. [Laughs.] We invited her for a brunch, and that's how we got to know her. Lauren Spohrer: Loren pored over the biographies that have been written about Chandler's life.
And what he realized was that every single one has basically the same ending, and not
one of them got it right. [Music.] So here's what you need to know about Raymond Chandler in order to make sense of what Loren
found. When Chandler was young, long before he became a writer, he fought in World War I with a
friend of his named Gordon Pascal. This friend Gordon is important, because shortly after the two of them got home from the war,
Raymond Chandler fell in love — with Gordon's stepmom. Loren Latker: Stepmother, yes.
Lauren Spohrer: Pearl Eugenia. But she went by the nickname Cissy. Annie Thiel: And Cissy was 18 years older than Ray.
Loren Latker: 17 or 18, something like that, yeah. Annie Thiel: 17 or 18 years older than Ray.
Lauren Spohrer: Cissy lied about her age to almost everyone. She cleaned the house in the nude.
Loren and Annie describe her as bohemian, a free spirit. Eventually, she left her husband and became Cissy Chandler.
Annie Thiel: She really enjoyed cooking for him. And they also had this glass menagerie of animals.
And they had a lot of fantasy between them. They played with those little glass animals like they were children, and they would make
up stories. And they would hop in their car, and they would go up into San Bernardino or up into
the Loren Latker: Into the mountains. Annie Thiel: ... local mountains. And it was quite a romance.
Lauren Spohrer: What do you think that she liked about him? Annie Thiel: I think that she liked that he had the soul of a poet and that he was handsome
and that she was very Loren Latker: She called him "Raymio." Annie Thiel: Raymio.
She was very sexually attracted to him. They were crazy about each other. What some people refer to as soulmates, I think.
Lauren Spohrer: Chandler didn't start writing crime novels until after they were married.
He published his first one, The Big Sleep, at age 51. They were married for 30 years.
And when she got sick, he waited on her hand and foot. He'd check her into the hospital, and she'd call right away, and say, "Come get me out
of here." And he would, even if it meant she had to go right back because she couldn't breathe.
Loren Latker: Cystic fibrosis. A fibroid or something that was turning the lungs to stone, essentially.
Lauren Spohrer: Cissy was 84 years old when she died, and Chandler fell apart. He wrote, "For 30 years, 10 months, and four days, she was the light of my life, my whole
ambition. Anything I did was just the fire for her to warm her hands at." Annie Thiel: He attempted suicide after she died.
He was deeply, deeply depressed. Always was an alcoholic, but he drank even more.
Lauren Spohrer: There was a small funeral, and Cissy was cremated. Chandler was sad and apparently going crazy.
In the years after Cissy died, some say he was so lonely and so drunk that he would propose
marriage to any woman within earshot. He died in 1959, just five years later. Because no one could find burial instructions, he was buried at public expense by the City
of San Diego at Mount Hope Cemetery. [Music ends.] Loren Latker: Well, about 2010, I was doing some further research and read that Ray had
wanted his eyes to go to an eye bank, he wanted to be cremated, he wanted to be with Cissy.
And I knew that hadn't happened. I didn't know where she was at the time. I knew that she had been placed in Cypress View and that he was in Mount Hope, the cemetery.
I had no idea where they were in relationship to each other or anything at all about that.
I'm thinking, "Well, gee, he wanted to be with Cissy. Too late to have his eyes go to an eye bank, but maybe I can bring the two of them together."
[Music.] Lauren Spohrer: So, what'd you do first? Loren Latker: Called Cypress View and said, "Do you have Cissy Chandler there?"
"Well, no, we can't find her." Lauren Spohrer: Loren kept calling and trying to get answers.
And each time he called, he got a little bit more information. One time the person on the phone said, "Oh, Cissy is here.
She's on a shelf." Loren Latker: "On a shelf?" "Yeah, with other remains. It was on the shelf."
I'd call again, "Oh, the shelf is in the store room." [Laughs.] I got the idea that it didn't seem kosher.
Lauren Spohrer: Loren couldn't actually go and see the urn for himself. He needed a family member.
Loren Latker: I couldn't find anybody related to Ray, and I started tracking down Cissy's
relatives, and I found a great-great-grandniece and a great-great-great-grandniece.
And, you know, contacted them. "Oh, that's a great idea. Why don't you go ahead and do that?
We love it." Lauren Spohrer: But that wasn't good enough. Loren needed someone closer, like a daughter or son.
The other option was to go to court, so they got a lawyer. Her name's Aissa Wayne.
Coincidentally, the daughter of legendary actor John Wayne. And lucky for them, the judge turned out to be a Chandler fan.
Annie Thiel: And the judge kept getting rid of all the other cases. They were just ordinary cases, like neighbors fighting, or this, that, and the other thing.
And he kept saying, "Okay, dismiss, dismiss, dismiss." He wanted to get to our case.
Loren Latker: In fact, said at one point, "Oh, I'm going to dismiss this for now, because
I have a very important case coming up." Annie Thiel: [Laughing.] That's right. He was very excited about it.
And so there we were, and Aissa and Loren and I down at the table, and there's the judge.
And the judge starts asking questions Loren Latker: Well, the first thing out of
his mouth was, "I'm not inclined to grant this." Annie Thiel: Right. And he Loren Latker: "Convince me."
Annie Thiel: "Convince me." Aissa had earlier gone to the guy at the crematorium and had asked him to be available to be on
the phone. So it was like a Perry Mason thing because Aissa said, "Well, Your Honor, we actually
have somebody ready to talk to you on the phone," and out of the phone in the courtroom
came the voice of the guy at the crematorium. And the judge says, "So where is Cissy?"
And the guy said, "In the storage room." Lauren Spohrer: We tracked this guy down.
He doesn't work at the crematorium anymore and didn't want to be recorded, but he said
he remembered talking to the judge. He actually said that Loren and Annie took up a lot of his time.
He kept telling me that Cissy was cremated there before he was even born, and so he had
no idea why she was in storage. Annie Thiel: And then the judge looks back and he said, "Not just Cissy Chandler, but
no one should be left in a room like that where people can't visit them." And he granted the petition.
[Music.] Lauren Spohrer: With the judge's okay, Loren and Annie went to Cypress View, the crematorium
where Cissy was being stored. Loren Latker: You walk inside, it's all marble. There was one room where they had a fireplace and the niches were like a bookcase.
Glass fronts, and you'd sit in a big chair in front of the fireplace. It looked like a library, except that your loved one would be in a niche behind a little
glass door. And you could sit and talk to them, or whatever you wanted to do. And the rest of it, the interior, was absolutely gorgeous, all marble and
Lauren Spohrer: So the place was beautiful, but what about the room where Cissy was?
Loren Latker: Well, I'm getting to that. Now, you would bring the casket in, you'd have your service, and then there was this
ramp at the back of the chapel that goes down to the crematorium. And you come down facing these two 100-year-old brick cremation ovens.
Looked like some kind of Rube Goldberg affair with pipes and peepholes and knobs and valves
and things on the front, and two and a half, three foot high, hinged at the top with a
hasp and a padlock on it. And that is where Cissy was. And over in an alcove to that room was the lawnmowers and brooms and the other things.
Lauren Spohrer: Her ashes had been on that shelf for 57 years. It's technically called long-term storage, but to you or me it looks like she got put
in a closet. There are two reasons why someone would wind up there instead of being interred, either
because it was the cheapest option or because you just forgot to go collect the ashes.
Annie Thiel: We think that he kind of forgot to get the cremains and bury them like he
had intended to do. Lauren Spohrer: Loren also told me that permanent storage is a nice sounding euphemism for ‘tossed
in a box and forgotten.’ Loren and Annie arranged another funeral service to bring Ray and Cissy together.
And on Valentine's Day 2011, they held the service at Mountain Hope Cemetery, for about
a hundred people. And they got some local news coverage. News Clip: Cypress View Mausoleum could've legally thrown away Cissy's unclaimed ashes
in 1959, but held onto them... [Fades out.] News Reporter: Actor Powers Boothe played Detective Philip Marlowe in a popular 1983
TV series. He read his favorite Chandler quotes during the ceremony. Powers Boothe: "I was as hollow and empty as the spaces between stars."
News Reporter: Loren Latker is a Chandler buff and organized the day's event. [Fades out.]
Lauren Spohrer: Yeah, Loren, I'm curious, how do you feel about ... I mean, you've kind
of written yourself into Raymond Chandler's biography now. Loren Latker: [Loren and Annie chuckle.]
Yeah, I guess so. I'm not sure how Ray would feel about that, but I was doing it to help Ray.
All of his wishes were ignored, so to me that was something that was wrong and needed to
be righted. And so that's why I went out and did that. Lauren Spohrer: Last question, and you can just say, "That's ridiculous."
But I wonder if you ever imagine their ghosts sort of saying thank you. Annie Thiel: Absolutely.
Absolutely. Loren Latker: I don't believe in ghosts. [Laughs.] Annie Thiel: We're very different that way.
In my mind's eye, I feel very delightfully that they're dancing around the cemetery.
Yes. [Chuckles.] That's what I think. Loren Latker: I indulge Annie on that level.
[Laughing.] Annie Thiel: I'm not finished yet. [Laughing.] Lauren Spohrer: I like the idea that you can go to Mount Hope Cemetery to visit Cissy and
Ray, and also see a little bit of Loren and Annie. They had a line from their favorite Chandler novel inscribed on the new headstone.
It reads, "Dead men are heavier than broken hearts." [Music.] Phoebe Judge: That's Lauren Spohrer.
Loren Latker has a Chandler website, www.shamustown.com, where you can see his brand new Raymond Chandler
map. It has 287 QR codes, so you can scan it with your phone and see spots that were either
important to Chandler or to his detective, Philip Marlowe. Criminal is produced by Lauren, Eric Mennel, and me.
Julienne Alexander does our episode art. And we have some news. Criminal will be putting on a live show here in Durham, North Carolina, on Wednesday, January
21st. If you live nearby, we'd love to see you. You can learn more on our website, thisiscriminal.com.
We're on Facebook and Twitter, @CriminalShow. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.
[Music fades out.]

Often called the greatest American crime novelist, Raymond Chandler became famous for writing murder mysteries like The Big Sleep and Farewell, My Lovely. He’s the subject of several biographies, and his correspondence and manuscripts are archived at Oxford. Until one day a pair of Chandler’s biggest fans, Loren Latker and Annie Thiel, discovered something very important to Chandler that had gotten lost.

Criminal is a show about people who’ve done wrong, been wronged, or gotten caught somewhere in the middle. Hosted by Phoebe Judge. Part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. https://link.chtbl.com/n33u0HsA

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Sign up for our occasional newsletter, The Accomplice https://bit.ly/accomplicenewsletter.

We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery.

Artwork by Julienne Alexander http://www.yssrs.com/.

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Episode transcripts are posted on our website https://thisiscriminal.com/

Episode 13 originally published 12/19/2014 https://thisiscriminal.com/episode-thirteen-the-big-sleep-12-19-2014

Brief Summary

Loren Latker and Annie Thiel reunite Raymond Chandler and Cissy after discovering her ashes were forgotten for decades.

Key points

Raymond Chandler's Philosophy. Chandler believed no one is truly a villain, reflecting on human complexity.
A Love Story. Chandler's deep love for Cissy shaped his life and work, even after her death.
Cremation Mystery. A couple's quest to reunite Chandler with Cissy reveals a shocking oversight.
A Valentine's Day Reunion. Loren and Annie organized a service to finally bring Chandler and Cissy together.
Chandler's Legacy. Loren Latker's dedication to Chandler leads to a unique tribute at his gravesite.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Guns never settle anything. They're just a fast curtain to a bad second act.

Raymond Chandler on violence in his writing

1:13WatchOct 26, 2022

Tension

70/ 100High tension

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