A Curse, A Ghost and A Murder

2/27/2025

by M.P. Pellicer | Stranger Than Fiction Stories
November, 1919 Fred Dean a well-liked rancher was found murdered in his bed. His head was bashed in and his throat slit with a razor. His wife and daughter slept downstairs when the crime was committed. What came to light during the trial, when his wife defended herself on a murder charge held the country spellbound for several months.

Group of Franciscan Friars, Mission, Santa Barbara c.1870-1906

However there was a backstory to this horrible crime, and like many scenes of murder it all starts with the land.

La Piedra Pintada (Painted Rock) sits on the slope of the Santa Ynez mountains, between the Montecito Valley and Cañada de las Alisas (Sycamore Canyon). It is a lonely boulder with a flat top, 20 by 30 feet in diameter that leads to a partially subterranean gallery. There is a cavity on its northwest side where a series of prehistoric paintings adorn the walls. According to Indian tradition it was known as the Bad Indian's Cave, and were mostly considered a mystery by them.

Franciscan missionaries who ventured into the area in the 16th century were the first to report on them.

Eventually Piedra Pintada become part of a ranch on Carisa Plains. There was an urban myth told of an Indian medicine man named Hago who laid a curse on the land.

This huge rock sat on part of the ranchland that was owned by Fred Dean on Carisa Plains, and "graven and painted across the face" was the warning: "Upon All Hereafter Coming Wrongfully Upon this Land Shall Fall a Curse."

The land had a reputation for strange tragedies, ghostly visitations, mysterious disappearances and gruesome finds.

One of the prehistoric paintings in Piedra Pintada

Four months after the murder of Fred Dean, T. C. Teeter was driving a road scraper in San Luis Obispo, close to Piedra Pintada and the Carissa Plain. Initially he unearthed nine skeletons. Reports stated that there were Indian bowls in the grave, even though there were no reports of an Indian cemetery in that area. Once the grave was opened 13 complete skeletons were found. Ten belonged to men and women and three belonged to children. Several of the skulls indicated trauma as if they had been hacked at with savage fury. Were they victims of a murder or a massacre?

Myrtle Dean eventually stood trial for the murder of her husband Fred

November 17, 1919
Rancher Fred Dean was found murdered in his bed. Initially there was no suspect or motive for such a horrible murder. He was a popular man, and the family was the picture of domesticity. Fred Dean was prominent in politics in San Luis Obispo county, and for 6 years was the deputy assessor. He was also known to always be armed, and supposedly slept with one eye open, so it was hard to believe someone had crept into his room and bludgeoned him.
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Fred Dean’s father, 75, passed away on February 1919, nine months before his son's murder. He died in Colorado with one of Dean's brothers, but he had lived with Fred and Myrtle for several years before that. Could the presence of the senior Dean, been the reason a crime had not been committed in the house before that fateful night in November, 1919?

Dean's wife had slept downstairs to tend to their daughter who was ill. Myrtle Dean was awoken at 5 AM by a train passing the house. She heard a noise of something being dragged upstairs, and she called out to her husband, but he didn't answer. She went to her husband's room and found him barely alive, and still breathing.

Myrtle Dean locked her daughter in her room so she wouldn't come upon the crime scene, and ran to the house of Fred Maze, a nearby neighbor for help. Within hours of the discovery of Fred's body, his wife attempted suicide by slitting her throat with a knife.

Bertha Dean

Prior to the murder, the house at 18th and Pine Streets had a reputation for being haunted. Approximately ten years before the Ferguson family lived there, a 3-year-old girl choked while eating almonds, or was strangled. In one version the parents went insane, and in the other they just simply left the house vacant. Fred Dean dismissed the ghostly stories and bought the house anyway.

During the trial, Mrs. Dean and her daughter Bertha told of ghostly figures seen flitting through the house, and weird noises made by unseen hands. They described where doors would open by themselves, and food disappeared from the dinner table after it had been set for a meal. One time a pitcher of cream was thrown from the table when the family was in another room of the house.

Fred slept upstairs alone because he was the only one who didn't care about the ghostly phenomena, and this was considered the most haunted part of the house.

Agnew Hospital for the Insane

Initially Bertha Dean who was 14 at the time, insisted her mother had nothing to do with her father's murder, however during the trial she testified that on the morning of the murder she felt she was under the influence of ether. She described where three weeks before her father's murder, her mother had all the windows downstairs nailed shut to keep out intruders, which further mystified the authorities as to how the killer gained entry to the house.

Bertha also said that several days before his death, Mrs. Dean had remarked, "Papa may not be with us long."

A conversation between her parents was: "Say hubby, how would you like to go to see Jesus?" "I'm not ready yet," he replied, "you don't need to think you can put anything in my tea."

Mrs. William Crow committed to Terrell Asylum, Texas c.1890

The autopsy found that Dean had been hit three times with a heavy object across the head, then a razor he kept in the room for shaving was used to slit his throat four times across the jugular vein, which is what caused his death.

Eventually Mrs. Dean was accused of the murder, however examination of her life history found that it was she, and not the house that was cursed.

When she was 10 years old her mother went insane following the birth of a child. She never recovered her sanity and was sent to the Terrell Asylum.

Several years later Myrtle set out for California from Cleburne, Texas with her father William Crow. They carried valuables and a considerable amount of money. They traveled on a train and took turns guarding it while the other one slept. One morning she awoke and found her father missing along with the valuables. The train was searched but he could not be found. The tracks were searched thinking he might have fallen off, but they never came upon anything to indicate what became of him. The mystery of his disappearance was never solved.

The Dean family were living on the San Miguel Ranch in 1910

Myrtle Crow continued to California and eventually met her husband Fred A. Dean, and after their marriage she spent several years as a semi-invalid.

During the trial, Mrs. Dean described that when she first met her husband he was the best man she had ever known, but that later he became unbearable.

Two alienists testified concerning Mrs. Dean's sanity. One of them, Dr. McGovern stated that there was a strong streak of hereditary insanity in Myrtle's family.

On April 23, 1920 a jury declared her insane, and she was committed to Agnew Hospital for the Insane. Little else is known about the fate of Myrtle. According to the census for 1930 and 1940 she was still an inmate at the insane asylum.

Myrtle died on May 31, 1970 in San Luis Obispo, only 20 days after turning 90 years of age. She was buried next to her husband at San Miguel District Cemetery.

Bertha married her first cousin Virgil Cottle in 1923. She died in 1991.

During the trial, it was believed that much of the evidence the prosecutors presented was circumstantial.

Did Myrtle lose her sanity for a moment and commit the crime, but return to normalcy afterwards? Was she influenced by a curse, or something much more ancient that existed on this land from before?
More than a hundred years later the answer still eludes us.