CALIFORNIA
In Cold Sweat
When escaped convicts invade their Bakersfield home, a family compresses mortal fear into concentrated rage.
Truman Capote is the granddaddy of true crime writing. He invented the notion of writing nonfiction so that it reads like a novel. In his 1966 true crime book, In Cold Blood, two parolees hear erroneously that a Kansas farmer has a safe filled with cash. They invade the farmer’s home, kill him and his family, escape with very little, and face execution.
The year that book was published, an equally horrifying home invasion story unraveled in Bakersfield, California. The ending, though, was different.
On the afternoon of September 8, 1966, Edna Smith, 54, was preparing dinner for her husband and adult son. Birch cabinets, lemon-pattern wallpaper, and matching drapes lined the yellow and gray kitchen. In the breakfast nook, wrought iron dining chairs with light blue leather cushions surrounded a glass-topped table.
The home, among the most desirable houses in Bakersfield, stood atop a giant bluff. Edna looked out the window across Panorama Drive as the sun began to descend over the oil fields in the distance. She noticed a black Thunderbird cruising slowly down the street. It returned and passed a second time. She presumed the driver was looking for an address.
A few minutes later, about 4:40 p.m., the doorbell rang. The black car was in her driveway, and two men and a woman in their early twenties stood at her door.
“This is an armed robbery,” one of the men announced without preamble. He was stocky with a puffy face and balding. “Keep quiet and you won’t get hurt.” The men, brandishing revolvers, and the woman, carrying a hunting knife, forced Edna back into her house.
The men asked her to mix them cocktails, and she complied. They questioned her about her family and her husband’s business. They asked if she expected any visitors.
The trio demanded she take them upstairs. There, the men tried on her son’s and husband’s clothes. The woman — slender with medium-length dark hair and blue eyes — filled the family’s suitcases with clothing. While she packed, the two men took Edna back downstairs. The thinner man, brown-haired and baby-faced, spotted a gun cabinet as they walked through the den. He asked for the key, and Edna unlocked it.
The thin man heard Edna’s son Bill, 23, arrive in his car and intercepted him. He forced Bill to the kitchen floor and snagged his wallet and wristwatch. They all waited for Ralph Smith to come home. The men had Edna make more drinks and then told her and Bill to sit at the glass table in the breakfast nook with their hands visible.
Ralph Smith was a 55-year-old real estate developer who had helped shape modern Bakersfield. Continuing the business launched by his grandfather in 1909, Ralph bought land, subdivided it, and developed thousands of homes. Focusing on affordable residences for veterans, he let other developers build big, fancy houses. Extensive advertising made the name Ralph Smith familiar to everyone in the area.
Bakersfield’s post-war prosperity was fueled by oil and fertilized by agriculture. The city was already the home of the “Bakersfield Sound.” That subgenre of country music was inspired by the migration of Dust Bowl refugees to California and popularized by Merle Haggard and Buck Owens, who lived a few houses away from the Smiths.
The area high school offered an architecture program that fed the University of Southern California. One of its students was Eugene Kinn Choy, an immigrant from Guandong, China. After graduating from USC, Choy became the second Chinese-American to join the American Institute of Architects, following I.M. Pei. Ralph Smith hired Choy to design his house.
Although Ralph built modest residences for others, he spared no expense on his own home. It featured five bedrooms and sprawled over 4,000 square feet on two acres. Rose trees lined the front walkway. The backyard offered a swimming pool, patio, outdoor kitchen, and barbecue pit. A balcony off the Smiths’ bedroom overlooked the backyard and a small orchard. I visited the house last month. Though the home first appears quite traditional, I realized that Choy had gently incorporated modern architectural elements, like clerestory ribbon windows and large overhanging eaves.
Edna was devoted to charity work, chairing benefit dinners and hosting fundraisers at her home. Her older daughter had wed several years earlier. Bill was obtaining an engineering degree at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, 2½ hours away.
Edna did not yet know it, but the stocky man who invaded her home was Robert Frogge. The woman was his wife, Sylvia. In 1965, the couple had robbed four businesses in and around Muncie, Indiana. While in jail awaiting trial, Robert and another convict planned an escape. They tried to inform Sylvia, who was also in jail, by hiding a note in a tube of toothpaste. The note was intercepted and the jailbreak foiled. Robert was sentenced to ten years for the robberies. Sylvia received a one-year suspended sentence.
In prison, Robert Frogge met William Tudor, who was serving a ten-year term for bludgeoning and robbing a 73-year-old man. The prison warden was a reformer who wanted to rehabilitate his men and teach them how to integrate back into society. Two weeks before the Smith home invasion, Frogge, Tudor, and 17 other convicts were bussed to a Jaycee picnic outside the prison. When no one was watching them, Frogge and Tudor walked off. They hoofed it to Frogge’s stepmother’s house, where he stole her 1961 Thunderbird, and Sylvia joined them. They held up a local finance company and netted $400, enough to fund a road trip to California. But not enough to fully realize their dreams of a free-spirited California lifestyle.
When Ralph got home, the thinner man, Tudor, met him at the back door with his revolver. He explained that they were robbing his family. Ralph thought the strange man was a friend of his son playing a practical joke. He said, “Fine, have fun,” and pushed past Tudor into the kitchen.
Seeing Frogge with another revolver standing over his wife and son, he exclaimed, “Is this for real?” The men took Ralph’s wallet and watch and forced him to sit at the table like the others. Ralph noticed that Frogge was wearing one of his sport coats. Frogge asked about Ralph’s real estate business. “I bet there’s quite a bit of money in the office safe,” he said. “I think we better find out.”
As Frogge marched Ralph to his station wagon, he told Tudor that if they weren’t back in 30 minutes, he should “get rid of the wife and boy.” It took Smith less than ten minutes to drive Frogge to his office, an unobtrusive modern storefront in downtown Bakersfield. Wanting the terrifying incident to end quickly, he unlocked the safe and handed about $400 in cash to Frogge.
To ensure his wife and son were not harmed, he called home at about 5:50 p.m. from his office phone. He handed the receiver to Frogge, who told Tudor they were on their way back.
Reentering the house, Ralph saw that Edna and Bill were still under guard in the kitchen. Sylvia was carrying suitcases to the Thunderbird, now parked in the Smith garage. The weapons from Ralph’s gun case were already inside. Sylvia couldn’t fit all the luggage into the sports car, so Tudor suggested they take Edna’s Cadillac.
The men argued about what to do with the Smiths. Frogge said he’d take them upstairs and bind them with tape. He added that once the car was loaded, “I’ll come back and do what has to be done.”
At gunpoint, Tudor and Frogge ordered Edna, Ralph, and Bill to the main bedroom upstairs.
Tudor instructed Ralph to remove his shoes and lie down beside the bed. Frogge directed Edna and Bill to the bed’s opposite side, nearer the door.
With death seemingly imminent, Ralph realized there was little risk in making a bold move. “I’ve had enough of this,” he declared. “Bill, let’s take ‘em.”
Bill, as if having expected his father’s command, instantly leaped onto Frogge and choked his neck. Ralph jumped onto Tudor.
Tudor fired his weapon three times, hitting Ralph twice. Nevertheless, with the stoicism of a condemned man, Ralph grabbed Tudor’s hand, dislodged the gun, and retrieved the weapon from the floor.
Tudor ran from the room. Ralph followed and fired three shots, one of which hit Tudor in the stomach. Tudor slid down the stairs and around a corner.
Ralph returned to help his wife and son. Frogge shot at him, and Ralph got hit two more times. Still choking Frogge, Bill told his father, “Kill ’em, Dad.” Ralph pointed his gun at Frogge’s brain, but it wouldn’t fire. He was out of bullets. All he could do was to slam the butt of the revolver repeatedly into Frogge’s head.
Bill asked his mother to run and grab any weapon she could find. She returned with scissors, but as Bill tried to stab the man, Frogge shot at him. Bill lurched to his side, but the bullet grazed his cheek and his mother’s arm. That was Frogge’s last shot. He, too, was now out of ammunition.
Ralph told his wife and son he could handle Frogge; they should run and get help. Angered, Frogge bit into Ralph’s fingers, almost severing his thumb and slicing open another finger. He broke loose from Ralph and ran downstairs to reload his weapon. Ralph could not pursue him; when he tried, his legs collapsed from the bullet wounds.
As she fled the bedroom with her son, Edna locked the door with the inside spring button. They climbed out a bathroom window onto the roof and dropped from the long eaves onto the ground.
Frogge returned upstairs. He pounded on the bedroom door, demanding Ralph let him back in. He shot into the door lock, but the bullet didn’t penetrate. For his own home, Ralph used only the best building materials.
As they scurried through an adjacent vacant lot, Bill saw his mother’s bloody arm and asked, “Have you been shot?”
“Yes,” she replied. “Have you been shot?”
“Yes.”
They approached the road, and Bill tried to wave down passing cars. Two failed to stop. Bill realized it was because his face was all bloody. Then he saw a vehicle with a rotating light on its roof. He stood in the street, waving his arms, and the car pulled over. The driver, a firefighter, said he didn’t have a gun, but he could call for help on his radio. Bill helped his mother into the car.
Then Bill noticed a pickup truck pull away from his family’s house. The vehicle belonged to a neighbor but had been parked in the Smiths’ driveway. Frogge was behind the wheel. He accelerated to 90 mph. A quarter-mile away, he tried to make a right turn, lost control, and overturned. He hit a stop sign, a parked car, and a tire rack at a gas station. Still in shock but energized by adrenaline, Bill went to the scene to ensure police apprehended Frogge. He was pinned in the wreckage but alive.
Tudor and Sylvia Frogge had run from the Smith home to a neighbor’s, where Tudor exclaimed, “You’ve got to help me, I’ve been shot.” The family thought he’d been in a gang fight and called the police. They were puzzled when an ambulance and a police car drove past their home. They didn’t know those emergency vehicles were heading toward Frogge’s crash. Authorities did not yet understand that the truck crash, the trouble at the Smiths’, and the call from the neighbors were all related. One of the family members drove Tudor to the hospital, where doctors treated the bullet wound in his stomach.
Bill helped the officers connect all the simultaneous events. Frogge was taken to the hospital for a scalp laceration and then jailed. Police placed Tudor into custody after his surgery and arrested Sylvia at the neighbor’s house.
In his bedroom, Ralph blacked out. He awoke to police pounding on the door and announcing themselves. “Open up and come out with your hands up,” a voice commanded.
“It’s Ralph,” he groaned, hoping the officers would know who he was. The police kicked down the door and rescued him.
An ambulance carried him to Bakersfield Memorial Hospital, which he’d helped found. He was one of its largest donors and president of its board of directors. Ralph had been shot four times, once in the chest, twice in the left leg, and once in the right leg. The bullet to his chest lodged in his lungs, close to his heart. Surgeons decided not to remove it.
Everyone involved in the incident survived, even Ralph, whose condition was the most serious.
William Tudor, Robert Frogge, and Sylvia Frogge all pleaded not guilty to charges of armed robbery, kidnapping with bodily harm, and attempted murder. A law instituted in California after the abduction of the Lindbergh baby made the second charge eligible for the death penalty.
Just before the trial, Sylvia changed her plea, admitting guilt to kidnapping for the purpose of robbery. Sylvia, who had not participated in the gun violence, was given a mandatory life sentence, but the reduced charge allowed the possibility of parole. Her husband and Tudor pleaded guilty to robbery charges only. They went to trial for kidnapping with bodily harm and attempted murder. The jury convicted both on the kidnapping charges and found just Frogge guilty of attempted murder. Both men avoided the gas chamber but were sentenced to life in prison.
Following the devastating incident, Edna Smith immediately resumed her charity work. A week afterward, she hosted 160 guests at her home for a Hawaiian-themed party for the Junior League. Surely, the community would have understood if she’d canceled it or found another venue.
Edna continued her philanthropic activities until her death in 1982 at age 70. Ralph lived four years longer, working at his real estate firm until he died at 73. Bill became a landscape architect, married and raised two children, and died in 2020 at 77.
Other than in their court testimony, the family never spoke publicly about the 1966 home invasion. They just carried on.
In 1977, a change in California law offered parole to some prisoners with life sentences. William Tudor was released shortly afterward. He married, lived in California and Arizona without engaging in any further criminal activity, and died in 1988.
Sylvia Frogge was imprisoned at the California Institution for Women in Southern California. After serving a year, she and two other inmates climbed the prison fence and escaped. She was recaptured. In 1972, she and Robert divorced. After her release, she returned to Indiana and remarried. There is no record of her getting into any more trouble. She survives at 82.
In 1969, while serving his life term at the notoriously unpleasant San Quentin, Robert Frogge wrote to police in Indiana. He implied his culpability for an unsolved 1965 murder in Muncie. But Indiana authorities couldn’t afford a trip to California to interview him, and they wondered whether he was just seeking a transfer to a better prison.
While incarcerated in California, Frogge experienced a transformation when he participated in the Erhard Seminar Training program known as “est.” He realized that his imprisonment was not due to the actions of others or the faults of society. “I really got it then that I was responsible for all this,” he said. “That’s when I turned it around.”
Frogge began counseling troubled juveniles who participated in prison education sessions. He corresponded with a woman outside prison. Upon his release in 1980, he got a job selling cars and married the woman. Together, they founded a crime prevention organization. Frogge spoke to community organizations across the West.
He admonished his generally law-abiding audiences about their minor transgressions — like breaking the speed limit and taking office supplies home from work. Frogge warned that tolerance for those actions teaches children that breaking the law is acceptable. I’m not sure how that idea squared with his decision to stop blaming society, but that was his message. In any case, the idea was curiously similar to a Time magazine article published about the same time.
In 1983, Frogge invited community groups into a coalition that would eradicate all crime by 2001. He asked people to take responsibility for their actions and spread that message to children, convicts, and politicians. Many signed on to the campaign.
2001 has come and gone, and crime still exists. Perhaps one reason is that in 1991, Frogge entered a bank in Sparks, Nevada, pointed a gun at a teller, and forced all the employees and customers to lie down on the floor. Police caught him soon afterward, with a handgun and piles of cash in the trunk of his car.
Frogge was released in 2015. Now in his eighties, he lives in the U.S. city least known for personal responsibility and self-determination. Las Vegas.
Copyright © 2024 Lou Schachter • All rights reserved
