“Walter and Beulah were murdered on their motor yacht in Newport Harbor,” she shared. “Their daughter, Beulah Louise, and her boyfriend, George ‘Bud’ Gollum, had left the boat to get hamburgers on the shore, when shortly after the boat exploded. Her parents’ bodies were found bludgeoned to death, and the trial became hot news around the country due to all of the interesting details surrounding it, including salacious love letters between the daughter and her boyfriend—making it the longest-covered trial until the O.J. Simpson case in the mid-1990s.” Many fingers pointed toward the young couple, as it was reported that her parents disapproved of their relationship and Beulah Louise thought she stood to inherit a small fortune upon their deaths. The defense argued that Walter had other enemies who set off the explosion or that the boat blew up because of gas fumes, and that the young couple would also have died had they not left the boat to get a snack. Beulah Louise and George were acquitted after a lengthy criminal trial, and the house and its contents were auctioned to cover legal fees. The buyer at auction resold the house for profit and it was later bought by a family who owned it from 1958 to 1998. It was then purchased by a financier who completed renovations and an expansion to the home before selling the property to Serles and Cornell in 2005. “The house had been in a benign state for 40 years until the gentleman we bought it from moved in,” Serles explained. “Originally it was an 8,000 square-foot house, then he added another 5,000 square-feet. He spent five years renovating and updating the place, so it has new electrical, plumbing, HVAC systems, a Lutron system—everything. We’ve continued maintaining, remodeling, replacing and upgrading.” One of Serles’ projects was the “aqueduct” that goes down the driveway. “People had trouble find-
10 / The Quarterly Magazine / Winter 2018
Winter 2018 / The Quarterly Magazine / 11