Capital Crimes

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Special thanks to Chief Douglas N. Hambleton and Officer Joseph E. Okies, Jr., of the Berkeley Police Department; Detective Jesse Grant of the Oakland Police Department; and Dr. Mordecai and Rena Rosen.

The club was from another age. So was Mother.

The Woman’s Association of Northern California, Conquistadores Chapter Number XVI, was housed in a sumptuous turn-of-the-century, Beaux-Arts-touched-by-Gothic castle topped by crenellations and turrets, and constructed of massive blocks of mauve-gray Deer Isle granite from a long-dead quarry in Maine. The interior was predictable: somber and dark save for stained-glass windows featuring historical Gold Rush scenes that blew jeweled patches on the walls when the sun shone through. Antique Persian rugs softened well-worn walnut floors, the staircase banister gleamed from decades of polish, thirty-foot ceilings were coffered and rimmed with gold. The ground floor of the building held all the public rooms, the two floors above contained sleeping chambers for the members.

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