Paradise Lost

In San Carlos, Nicaragua, on Feb. 23, 1894, according to U. S. Immigration records, French and German parents gave birth to one Jean Dee Jarnette, who was brought to California in 1910, ran off to sea two years later. In 1923, after Jean Dee Jarnette had roamed restlessly over Europe, Australia and the South Seas, he was convicted of rape and sent to California's lone Reformatory. In 1931, he was again convicted of rape and carrying concealed weapons, sent to San Quentin. There he confided to his cellmate an ambition that had slowly been forming in his mind, to get hold of a small boat, and "explore" the southern Pacific.

When middle-aged Jean Dee Jarnette was released last April, his first act was to take out duplicate seaman's papers under the names of Jack Morgan and Wes S. Glenn. As Jack Morgan he shortly turned up in New Orleans, married a pretty 17-year-old laborer's daughter named Lillian Casanova, took her back to California where the pair led a hand-to-mouth existence working as bellhop and chambermaid in hotels.

But Jack Morgan never forgot his ambition, was often observed prowling around yachts. Last month he had a singular stroke of luck. Living aboard his trim 58-ft. schooner yacht Aafje in San Pedro harbor was a lighthearted, thin-haired sportsman named Dwight L. Faulding. The owner of a Santa Barbara photo shop and hotel, Dwight Faulding was once rich and foolish enough to have bought a plane which he took up without a single flying lesson, crashed spang into a Santa Barbara street.

He and Jack Morgan became acquainted. Last fortnight impecunious Jack Morgan "chartered" the Aafje to take his pregnant wife on a cruise and Yachtsman Faulding took on two young men named Edward Spernak and Robert Home as crew. Glib Jack Morgan talked Los Angeles Nurse Elsie Berdan into joining the party to take care of his wife. Sportsman Faulding invited along one of his friends, stoutish Mrs. Gertrude Turner, who brought her 8-year-old son Robert. On the evening of December 20 the Aafje and its eight passengers cleared the San Pedro breakwater and scudded silently out into the Pacific.

Nine days later a Navy plane, cruising south of its San Diego base, reported a small yacht wallowing in heavy seas, an SOS crudely painted on its torn mainsail. Out went Coast Guard amphibians and the cutter Perseus, which was soon chugging back the 180 miles to San Pedro with the Aafje in tow. The message also brought out a cutter with Special Agent W. H. Osborne of the Department of Justice on board. For the story the, six half-starved survivors of the Aafje had to tell involved, if not the piracy Jean Dee Jarnette had dreamed of, an example of the grave Federal crime of murder at sea.

The Aafje had been out of San Pedro but a few hours, according to the survivors' stories, when Jack Morgan swaggered out to the wheel, began an argument with Dwight Faulding. When Morgan pulled a gun, Dwight Faulding ran for his. But Jack Morgan's blazed first. "Then Jack," his young wife related, "began to act just like a madman." Taking command, he forced his frightened companions into their cabins, steered south. When Elsie Berdan protested Morgan's advances, she got a clout on the head.

Soon Jack Morgan decided to keep the dwindling food and water, laid in for a two-day trip, to himself. On the fourth day, Christmas Eve, thoroughly scared, Spernak and Home managed to steal up to Jack Morgan, fell him with a marlin spike. In the scuffle he went overboard, into the shark-infested waters where he had thrown dead Dwight Faulding. Then, some 500 miles away from home off the Mexican coast, without fuel for the auxiliary engines and a mainsail disabled by storms. the skipperless Aafje turned to drift back.

When the Perseus and the Aafje finally reached San Pedro last week little Robert Turner was sick, Mrs. Turner was sobbing, Lillian Morgan had begun to laugh, Nurse Berdan was grim, all near hysteria. Spernak and Home, held on charges of murder, were expected to plead self-defense. The Aafje, which Jean Dee Jarnette had hoped would carry him to a remote Paradise, was promptly attached by two ship chandlers who claimed that the late Dwight Faulding owed them $5,745.

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