![]() Gladys Baker Eley passed away on March 11, 1984. He joined the News-Press when it was on Isabel Street, and he became known for breaking-news photographs that won numerous awards, according to his Feb. He proudly showed me a framed copy of the News-Press, with his photo of Eley placed prominently on the front page.ĭeisbeck, who died this last January at age 85, was a 1949 graduate of Hoover High. In 2006, while working on a Verdugo Views column about Deisbeck, I interviewed him in his home. “He sold it to magazines and newspapers all over the world.” “That was the most famous picture he ever did,” son Rusty said. After determining that she was unharmed, they returned her to the sanitarium.ĭeisbeck’s photo earned front-page coverage in many newspapers. The police officers told the reporter (who did not get a byline in the Jarticle) that Eley stated she wanted to get away from the sanitarium and practice her Christian Science teaching. “It was real hush hush,” his son recalled.Īfter he got the photo - the first taken of Eley in more than 20 years - Deisbeck raced back to the News-Press, leaving the reporter to get the story. “Police and firemen contacted him all the time in those days, they knew to call him directly at home,” his son Rusty said in a recent phone interview.ĭeisbeck was met at the church by two female police officers. The minister who found her called the police they were soon followed by Glendale News-Press photographer Louie Deisbeck and a reporter.ĭeisbeck, who had been with the newspaper since 1957, had many contacts in the city. She had spent the night in the church’s utility room, sitting near the water heater to keep warm. Twenty-four hours later, she was discovered some 15 miles away in a church on Foothill Boulevard. After climbing over the wire mesh fence surrounding the property, she began walking. ![]() ![]() Less than a year after Monroe died, the 60-year-old Eley fashioned a rope out of two uniforms, climbed through an 18-inch-square closet window and lowered herself to the ground. Monroe’s will provided a trust fund payment of $5,000 a year for her mother’s care, according to the July 5, 1963, edition of the Glendale News-Press. Eley spent much of her life in mental hospitals and Monroe, who was raised by a series of foster parents, rarely saw her.Įley had been at Rockhaven for some 10 years when Monroe died in August 1962. And the Glendale News-Press got the story.Įley, a single mother, had a mental breakdown shortly after the 1926 birth of her daughter Norma Jeane Baker (later to become Marilyn Monroe). Why? Because she was Marilyn Monroe’s mother. When Gladys Baker Eley climbed out of a window at Rockhaven Sanitarium in Montrose one night and disappeared, the story made the headlines.
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