Read Part I here and Part II here. If you want to skip right to the conclusion, read on.
February 21, 1960 marked 30 years since the murder of Dexter Moormeister, wife of Salt Lake City physician Dr. Frank Moormeister. The case was still unsolved, and with almost all of the principal figures now gone, it seemed almost certain that it would remain so.
That’s why it was even more surprising when four years later, someone confessed.
This is Part II in the story of Los Angeles underworld figure Larry Potter and his connection to the February 21, 1930 murder of Dorothy Dexter Moormeister, wife of Salt Lake City doctor Frank Moormeister continues. Read Part I here.
1930 had ended with no notable progress in the Moormeister murder case. As 1931 dawned, however, there was literally a new sheriff in town: S. Grant Young, who had defeated the incumbent Sheriff Clifford W. Patten the past November.
According to post #18870 by user Lorendoc on Skyscrapers.com’s “Noirish Los Angeles” forum, dated 1/15/2014, the FBI’s General Crime Survey: Los Angeles dated April 15, 1945 described Larry Potter as a murder suspect who had come to the city from Utah after things got too hot for him there during Prohibition. The author obtained a copy of that report from the FBI on November 5, 2021 through a Freedom of Information Act request. This copy of the report, assuming it is the same one referenced by Lorendoc, did contain intel on Potter and mentions that he came from Salt Lake City, where he had a reputation of being a “pimp, gambler and small time racketeer,” but does not refer to him as a murder suspect.
Potter was connected to a murder case in Utah, however- though not as a suspect, at least not publicly. It was the violent murder of Dexter Moormeister, wife of Dr. Frank Moormeister, which took place February 21, 1930. Although it occurred outside Salt Lake City, many of the principal persons involved had ties to Los Angeles.
The following is based on the author’s own, original research. Continue reading
J. H. Graham 