cabin fever brings out the ghost stories
(photo and text from sharlot hall museum archives: here)
Juanita Maria dean, simply known as Sammy dean, was an attractive woman with a bright smile and big eyes with a certain sad look about them. Those who knew her said she was slender and pretty, known to men and women to be very kind and friendly to everyone. She was from Texas and gracious in the same manner Texas women of the day were known. On July 7, 1931, she was found strangled at her apartment in Jerome near the Victory Market below Hull Avenue, on the edge of the Mexican Quarter. That day in July at 8:30 in the morning, a white man in a Panama hat was seen entering Sammy’s house. The witness said Sammy had on a green dress. Early that evening Leo Portillo found his friend Sammy clad only in a slip with a blanket tossed over her body, dead. A lot of evidence pointed to one of the mayor’s sons, but he was never questioned. Maybe there was a coverup, or maybe the police just didn’t bother because Sammy was a prostitute and a ‘grass widow.’ A ‘grass widow’ was a woman whose husband had left her but did not support her. Sammy’s husband was a gambler and so far as her family knew she had left Texas with him for Colorado. His name was George dean, but what happened to him is not known. Nor is it known how Sammy landed in Jerome instead of Colorado. Her murder and life were nothing more than unanswered questions.
(and a very popular part of the jerome ghost tour)
