Assistant District Attorney Milton U’Ren interviewed Josephine Keza, a Polish immigrant and hotel maid, in room 1220 of the St. Francis Hotel on September 16, 1921, one week after Virginia Rappe’s death. Her statement, read into the record of the first Arbuckle trial, provides a different take on Virginia Rappe’s arrival at the Labor Day party. 

Mrs. Keza had been going in and out of all three rooms of the Arbuckle suite—1219, 1220, and 1221—throughout the late morning of Monday, September 5. Arbuckle, Fred Fishback, and Lowell Sherman let her work around them. Missing in her account is Ira Fortlouis, the gown salesman, whose sighting of Rappe in the Palace Hotel resulted in her invitation to Arbuckle’s suite and what happened to her during the course of the afternoon.

Keza noticed Arbuckle shaving in room 1219’s bathroom. She paid special attention to a man named “Freddie,” the comedy director Fred Fishback, Arbuckle’s roommate in 1219. She heard him trying to telephone Rappe from the room’s telephone and getting no answer. If so, it adds another link in the chain of events. It means that (1) Fishback didn’t need Fortlouis to tell him what he already knew, that Rappe was staying at the Palace; and (2) Fishback tried her room first before having her paged in the hotel dining room.

Keza also saw that Fishback was in charge of the liquor supply, keeping it under lock and key in room 1221’s closet. In her rambling account, she may have seen him drinking, too. (During the three Arbuckle trials, Fishback was adamant about shunning both alcohol and cigarettes.)

U’Ren, of course, wanted to know what Arbuckle did, which wasn’t easy, given Keza’s Polish accent and command of English. She was, nevertheless, observant. The party proved to be a rich source of gossip for her workmates below.

To Keza, the comedian and the actress were on familiar terms when she entered the reception room, 1220, shortly after Rappe’s arrival. She knew Fishback and Arbuckle’s friend, the actor Lowell Sherman, who had also come from Los Angeles for the long weekend in San Francisco. At first, they were the only ones in the room.

Q. And then Mr. Arbuckle came in?
A. Yes, sir, then he came out from the bathroom and he come right straight to Miss Virginia and he talked to her very closely. I can’t say if he kissed her, or he spoke to her. They were talking very quiet. I didn’t listen.
[. . .]
Q. Did you hear the sound of a kiss?
A. No.

Whether Arbuckle planted a kiss is moot. But other guests saw that he and Rappe paired off and that she enjoyed his company.

Understanding Keza was one thing. Getting the sequence of events from her must have been maddening. U’Ren wanted to hear what the other witnesses had told him. Arbuckle had been disturbed in whatever he was doing to Rappe on his bed in 1219. As soon as he left the room, his guests tried to help Rappe. As she eavesdropped from an adjacent room, Keza only heard a certain disregard, even resentment.

Q. Did you hear a crowd in 1219 while you were in 1218?
A. Yes. I was in 1218. There was a whole bunch talking and hollering and they go back to the parlor and holler and were dancing and that girl was crying.
Q. Did you hear anybody knocking on the door [of 1219] before the crowd went into the room.
A. No, sir.
Q. Did you hear anybody say, “Open the door”?
A. No, I didn’t hear that.

This had to frustrate U’Ren, who was, perhaps, more than just enthusiastic about taking on the Arbuckle case. Keza wasn’t corroborating what the other guests were saying, especially the women he intended as state witnesses.

Keza heard people laughing as Rappe screamed “Oh my God! No, no, no!” Continuing to listen to the hubbub of the guests inside Arbuckle’s suite, Keza caught a glimpse of a partially clad couple running between one room and another.

A. [. . .] I couldn’t catch it quick, because I was taking my towels, or something, from the closet, but I saw a man come through the room [i.e., the hallway], but I couldn’t say whether from 1219 or 1220, but he came out from one of those two rooms, and then I saw a woman, undressed, go out and run quick to number 1220. She was undressed, she had nothing on, just a combination suit, what you call it.[2]
Q. She could have come from 1220 and run in[to] 1221?
A. She didn’t go to 1221, she go to 1220, the parlor. I didn’t see where she came from, but I saw her right in the hall. She sneaked as quick as she could. First the fellow get up, then she was the next one, then they slammed the door.
Q. First a fellow, then a girl?
A. The fellow first.
Q. How was the fellow dressed?
A. I didn’t see. I just saw the bare feet of a man. I saw the shoes—
Q. (Interrupting) Was the girl in her bare feet?
A. She had her shoes and stockings on.

U’Ren intended to leave the mysterious couple out of his direct examination of Josephine Keza. He had also left out other details so that he could make Rappe’s utterances into a single one, more like a woman suddenly afraid of being hurt, of being raped, after Arbuckle had her cornered in his bedroom, on the other side of 1219’s hallway door. This was how a messy case was cleaned up by district attorneys, to make the crime easy to understand for a jury.

Arbuckle’s lawyers knew what U’Ren did. They considered him a dirty prosecutor for his neat work. And U’Ren hardly protested when Gavin McNab, the comedian’s lead counsel, had him hand over Keza’s statement to be read aloud to jurors. They had more evidence to consider, not only did Rappe’s cries of pain extend over a period of time. They had a few snapshots of what the real Labor Day party was like along with the straightened versions on the part of both the prosecution and the defense.

(See also “I heard a man’s voice say ‘Shut up.’”)

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[1] This is from Keza’s statement, where she quotes an exchange she heard between two women in room 1221. “S.B.” was likely the stenographer’s abbreviation for “stupid bitch,” in reference to Rappe.

[2] A “combination suit,” a single undergarment, consisting of a camisole and panties.