New York Sun, December 13, 1923
PASADENA, California (AP) — Dr. Leonard Siever, a dentist, was found shot to death today in a driveway alongside the Scottish Rite Cathedral here. There were bullet wounds in his chest and head.

A cursory investigation disclosed no firearm about the body, and the police concluded that Dr. Siever had been murdered, whether by robbers or by an enemy they had not determined.

The body was found about 5 a.m. by a milkman. Nearby, in the driveway, Dr. Siever’s automobile was parked.

The dentist was about 30 years old. He had been active in music, art and civic circles here.

Milwaukee Journal, March 4, 1934
In the pouring rain, two inscrutable sphinxes gazed stonily at the crumpled body of a murdered man with two bullet holes in his body as he lay near his automobile beside the Scottish Rite cathedral in Pasadena, California.

A milkman on his rounds saw the body and shouted the alarm. Police arrived. In the drizzle of dawn they worked hastily and soon discovered the slain man was suave Dr. Leonard Siever, 45, Russian born and prominent Pasadena dentist, patron of the arts and said by some to be a bit of a Don Juan.

But there was nothing on the rain swept pavement of value toward solving the mystery of the murder. There was no clue to the slayer, no clue to the motive. And after a far-flung investigation, the murder of Dr. Siever remained the riddle of the sphinx.

Tracking back after the murder, it was found that beautiful young women played leading roles in the life of Dr. Siever. His office records revealed he had employed 17 different girls and young women as his office assistant in just three years.

Several of the girls were married. They followed one another in the dashing dentist’s office with bewildering rapidity. His records further showed that a majority of his dental patients were women, many from Pasadena’s famed “millionaires’ row.”

And in the futile investigation which followed the murder, scores of innocent women married and unmarried, were questioned by police in the hope of finding the doctor’s slayer.

There is no doubt Dr. Leonard Siever was strongly attracted to young and pretty women, yet always his ardor was that of the aesthete rather than the lover. He built himself air castles on a rare, cultural plane and invited those he knew and cared for to dwell there with him.

He had feminine taste without being effeminate. He would attend women’s club meetings and women’s teas and women’s social functions, sometimes as the only man among them. He loved fine paintings, jewels and even old lace and feminine trinkets.

But the theory that a “wronged woman” might have killed Dr. Siever was practically eliminated by the nature of his wounds. He was assassinated, and not murdered in the heat of a woman’s rage. But all through his life runs the thread of his attraction for women and their attraction to him.

A well set-up, handsome, gentlemanly fellow who worshiped music — that was Dr. Siever when he wasn’t courting some beautiful woman.

His love of music made him introduce an ingenious way of keeping his patients from being nervous while they were in the dentist’s chair. Behind velvet drapes in his office he had a phonograph and while he worked on the patient’s teeth, he played records of classical music, grinding at molars to the rhythm of a symphony orchestra playing Beethoven.

Born in Russia, he was a student of languages, as well as of the art of the land that gave him birth. Everywhere he went, the dentist carried books and music with him. In his briefcase, which lay beside the body, were a number of songs, most of which dealt with love.

The killing was done in the night, probably between the hours of 11 p.m. and midnight, when the rain was drumming on the pavement, on the cold bodies of the great statues, and the wind was whirling around the cathedral — a dark night for a dark deed with few people about in Pasadena.

And within this mystery of a murder, there lurked another mystery as to why Dr. Siever was out in the storm and why he had gone to this eerie spot under the blind eyes of the stone sphinxes. The whole situation presented an enigma as insoluble as the strange legend which surrounds those silent statues.

Apparently his slayer was hidden behind one of the sphinxes. He must have crept out, his footsteps muffled by the rain, and must have stood very close to the dentist. He fired at the back of the doctor’s head, and then, as the victim fell, made sure he was dead by putting another bullet into the prostrate form. The crime was committed as Dr. Siever unlocked his automobile.

Tracing the life of Dr. Siever, police found a jumble of faces of beautiful women, a veritable jigsaw of soft lips and smiling eyes. So, from among the faces of many women, police are seeking the face of one woman — the woman who loved Siever.

All along, the police theory has been that Siever was killed by a man and that the man killed Siever because of a woman. If they could find the woman they could find the man and solve the mystery.

Light was thrown on the past and the character of Dr. Siever by a beautiful motion picture extra, Eleanor Johnson, 20, known on the screen as Eleanor Lee. She was brought into the investigation when it was learned the dentist at one time had sought to marry her.

“Dr. Siever,” she said, “would try to make love to every woman he went out with. He lived for the glamorous showy things in life. He told me he was only 23 years of age when I met him at a cocktail party in Pasadena about a year ago.

“He said he was immediately attracted to me. He discussed dramatic art and music and we soon discovered we had a mutual love for the arts. Very soon after we met, he began calling on me. We attended many concerts plays and musicals together. He soon proposed marriage, but I told him that though I enjoyed his friendship, I was not in love with him.

“Everything he did, he did for show. He told me he liked to take me fine places because I was young and beautiful and focused attention on him. He continued from time to time to ask me to marry him, but I refused each time. He was a marvelous dancer and loved to attract attention at parties by fancy exhibitions.”

Other women who knew Dr. Siever through music and who had been his patients could cast little light on the mystery of his murder. Mrs. Frances Coen Cooke, beautiful Pasadena divorcée, who was to have accompanied him to the home of a mutual friend on the night of the murder, was questioned. She told how she had waited in vain for the doctor on the fatal evening.

From Miss Cathryn Moodle, 21-year-old Pasadena socialite, who was a friend of Dr. Siever, it was learned that a woman who had once been engaged to him had hounded him for several months.

The woman, it was learned, intimated to all her acquaintances that it would be dangerous for any other woman “to pick up with the doctor” where she left off, Miss Moodle said.

“Dr. Siever said he was extremely glad he never married her,” she said, “because her insane jealousy would have made his life unbearable.”

Miss Moodle further revealed the dentist once informed her that a woman had drawn a gun and threatened his life, but she did not know whether it was the woman to whom he had been engaged. Dr. Siever made light of the incident, she said.

Police also questioned a young singer who knew Dr. Siever, after it was learned he had gone five times to see a comic opera at the Pasadena Community Playhouse in which she appeared. But the singer, Miss Zaruhi Elmassian, soprano of the Los Angeles Opera Company, said she “knew Dr. Siever professionally, but not socially” and had “no knowledge of the case whatever.” Miss Elmassian said she was unaware of his many visits to her performances in the opera.

Miss Mary Rockwell, one of Dr. Siever’s patients, who admitted giving him a kiss the morning of the day he was slain, could throw no light on the mystery.

Miss Muriel Evans said she met Dr. Siever in 1926 in San Francisco when she was a professional dancer there. She said he fell in love with her and they became engaged, but later the engagement was broken.

“I always thought he had some fear of someone, and I remember him asking me, ‘What would you think if you found me with my head chopped off and lying in a pool of blood?’ I told him jokingly I would keep on dancing,” Miss Evans said.

“I remember another time, after we had become engaged, he told me he had a “purple past” and he had made an awful mistake in his life.”

Dr. Siever’s associations with women were paradoxical. He went out of his way to help young women musicians on their way to fame. He even founded the Artist-Student League in Pasadena, a benefit foundation for music students.

In striking contrast was his treatment of the women who worked for him, some of them staying but a few hours. It was brought out that in one case a girl who worked for him three weeks was forced to resign her position after authorities of the college she attended investigated Dr. Siever’s references.

Rome Daily Sentinel, August 31,1934
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A fantastic solution for one of California’s most mystifying murders came today from the lips of a woman sentenced to die.

Mrs. Nellie Madison claims her husband killed Dr. Leonard Siever, Pasadena society dentist, in a fight over another woman. So says Blaney Matthews, special investigator for the district attorney.

Matthews says Mrs. Madison, a former Montana cowgirl, told him that shortly before his death, her husband, Eric D. Madison, confessed he had shot Dr. Siever. It was for the fatal shooting of her husband that Mrs. Madison, a crack pistol shot, was sentenced to be hanged.

The investigator said Mrs. Madison implicated a Los Angeles woman in the fight leading to the dentist’s death. A woman to whom Madison gave a costly wrist watch supposedly was one of the women linked with the socially prominent Pasadenan’s love life.

This was the watch, Mrs. Madison said, that was taken from Dr. Siever’s wrist when he was shot down last December 12 near the Scottish Rite Cathedral, and figured so prominently in subsequent investigations. The watch was mailed to Mrs. Frances Coen Cooke, wealthy Pasadena divorcée who was a central figure in the murder investigation, with a demand for $5,000.

Mrs. Madison’s weird story was reportedly told at Tehachapi Prison where she is awaiting execution for the murder of her husband in his Burbank, California, apartment on March 24.

Authorities agreed her story sounded fantastic, but said they knew her husband had often registered at Pasadena hotels. Every angle of her statement is being investigated, Matthews said.

Mrs. Madison said she met Madison when he was engaged to marry a Pasadena girl. The former cowgirl was manager of an inn at Palm Springs which Madison, his fiancée and Dr. Siever sometimes visited.

Madison and Dr. Siever fought over the girl, the condemned woman said, and one night, while intoxicated, Madison told her he killed the dentist.

“He (Madison) swore me to secrecy and threatened to kill me if I ever said anything about it.”