Pat O'Brien
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The photo of these news articles was found at a site on the 66 Squadron, RFC & RAF, 1916 to 1919, by John Grech. For further information about Pat O'Brien, see Mr. Grech's site at www.66squadron.co.uk. The text of these articles, the first of which is hand-identified as being from the Dec. 19, 1920, New York World, follows:
AIR HERO IS A SUICIDE OVER BREAK WITH WIFE
Lieut. Pat O'Brien, Daredevil, Kills Himself in Los Angeles
-- Says He is Coward.
LOS ANGELES, Cal., Dec. 18 -- Lieut. Pat O'Brien, one of the most daring and spectacular aviators in the British Royal Flying Corps during the war, ended his adventurous life in his room at the Alexandria Hotel here to-day because he had failed to become reconciled with his wife, a motion picture actress.
"With all my war record I am just like the rest of the people -- a little bit of clay. Only a coward would do what I am doing," he wrote shortly before he fired the shot that killed him.
After mentioning in endearing terms his wife, his mother and his sisters, the note reads:
"And may the One that answered my prayers when I was making my escape from Germany once more answer them, and bring trouble, sickness, disgrace and more bad luck than anyone else in the world has ever had and curse forever that awful woman that has broken our home and has taken you from me.
"She has caused this life of mine, that just a few minutes ago was so happy to go on that awful adventure of death."
Lieut. O'Brien had married less than a year ago Miss Virginia Elizabeth Allen of Washington. They came to Los Angeles last June. He was thirty years old.
Through a close friend, Mrs. Sarah Ottis of Springfield, Ill., Mrs. O'Brien expressed the opinion her husband had been mentally unbalanced and that he had planned to kill her had she responded to a telephone request to meet him.
Mrs. Ottis, it developed later, was the woman mentioned in the message O'Brien addressed to his wife as having interfered in their family affairs. Mrs. O'Brien declared Mrs. Ottis never had interfered between her husband and herself.
"Mrs. Ottis has been more of a mother to me than anything else," said she. "Last Tuesday, after Mr. O'Brien had given way in a fit of temper, in which he broke my finger, I left our home and engaged a room at a hotel. Mrs. Ottis joined me at my request. She had nothing to do with my leaving home. I simply decided I could no longer live with my husband.
Mrs. O'Brien was a bride of a few months. She declined to give her former name or any facts concerning herself and was secluded under a physician's care. Friends of O'Brien said his wife was formerly a newspaper woman in Washington, where he met her, and that she wrote under the name of "Virginia Dale" or "Virginia Durn. While O'Brien was engaged in motion picture work here last summer his wife did some studio work, but she was said to be unemployed at present.
Lieut. O'Brien, a native Californian, has seen service in five wars. He was a member of an aero squadron Texas when the war broke out, and early in the conflict enlisted in Canada. His most spectacular of a number of exploits that gained him a wide reputation for his daring was when he fell several thousand feet behind the German lines with a bullet in his throat after a battle with a German flyer.
His unconscious body was found lying near the machine, which he had succeeded in keeping under partial control until the landing, and he was taken to a military hospital. From here, when he was cured of his wound, the flyer was sent by train to a prison camp in the interior.
During the night O'Brien leaped through a window of the moving train into the fields and for seventy-two days wandered about the country, hiding by day and traveling by night, living on such food as he could steal from the fields, and clad in a tattered civilian garment over his uniform. Finally he reached the Dutch border and reached neutral ground by digging under the electrically charged wire fence with a stick and his bare hands. When he returned to England he had an audience for nearly an hour with King George at Buckingham Palace. Two years ago O'Brien had another fall at Kelley Field, San Antonio, in which he broke his nose.
HERO MURDERED, THEY SAY.
Lieut. Pat O'Brien's Relatives Allege Woman Killed Him.MOMENCE, Ill., Dec. 24 -- Relatives and friends of Lieut. Pat O'Brien, hero aviator, are not satisfied with the verdict of suicide rendered by the Coroner's Jury in Los Angeles, where he was supposed to have shot himself.
Mrs. Clara Clagg, his sister, and his brother have begun an investigation in which they will be assisted by all his friends.
Efforts will be made to reopen the inquiry where, O'Brien's relatives say, they will give the authorities the name of the woman they charged killed O'Brien.
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Los Angeles Authorities Positive It Was Suicide.
LOS ANGELES, Dec. 24, 1920 -- The police, the Coroner's office and the District Attorney's office to-night expressed their conviction that Lieut. Pat O'Brien killed himself. The aviator-hero was shot through the mouth, the bullet passing out and piercing the wall near the ceiling. The angle at which the bullet struck the wall officials say is proof conclusive that no one but O'Brien himself could have fired the shot.The District Attorney declared his willingness to thoroughly investigate any evidence tending to disprove ____ ____ that may be presented to him.
CONFIRMS O'BRIEN SUICIDE
LOS ANGELES, Cal., Dec. 26 -- Capt. Charles R. Moffatt, in charge of the Detective Bureau here, to-day announced that a second investigation of the death on Dec. 11 of Lieut. Pat O'Brien, war aviator, confirmed the verdict in the first investigation that O'Brien committed suicide. The second investigation was ordered after a relative was reported to have expressed the opinion that the aviator was murdered.Return to Lowell Photo Album