Chapter 18

The Brat Wagon

Margaret Rowney—Van Nuys

Like millions before and since, Margaret Rowney moved to California to start a new life. The twenty-seven-year-old widow brought her four children to Encino in 1948 after her railroad worker husband was killed on the job. The Pennsylvania Railroad supplied her with a generous pension. The Baltimore native probably thought that the sunlight of Southern California would wash away the grit that stained her heart.

She developed a stable relationship with Raymond Bennett, a thirty-six-year-old foundry worker who cherished his instant family. Margaret called their wood-paneled station wagon “The Brat Wagon,” and she had the children’s names painted on both sides of the car. Painted on the driver’s side door was “Ray” and “Margie” was written on the passenger side.

In the early morning hours of December 14, 1950, while Ray was working the graveyard shift, Margie braided her long hair around her head and put on her blue jeans and a leather jacket. She roused her children—seven-year-old Peggy, five-year-old George, four-year-old Guy, and three-year-old Thomas—from their beds and got the pajama-clad kids into the backseat of the Brat Wagon. She drove up Mulholland Drive into the Santa Monica Mountains and found a secluded spot under a giant oak tree in Topanga Canyon. Carefully, so as not to wake her sleeping children, Margie took a vacuum cleaner hose and attached it to the exhaust pipe of the Brat Wagon, putting the other end into the passenger compartment.

Police on routine patrol found the car. The engine was out of gas, but still warm. The children in the backseat were tumbled across each other just like sleeping children do. Margie was sprawled on the front seat. There was no note.

The murder-suicide perplexed everyone who knew Margie. Her sister, friends, neighbors, and boyfriend Ray had no idea why Margie would do such a thing. On December 19, 1950, Margie’s sister Violet flew to Baltimore with five coffins to be interred in her hometown.

Later that day, the heartbroken Bennett took the family dog Inky with him into the garage at the home that was once filled with joyful noise. He ended his life in the Brat Wagon, exactly like Margie had. An empty bottle of whiskey and a note was found inside the home at 4973 Noeline Avenue. The note made no more sense than Margie’s actions: “We would have started where we lost them, but we didn’t want to be stopped. We will find the reason.”