The Most Dangerous Animal of All. Susan Mustafa D.

      They spent the next month pretending they were married and hoping Verda would not find them. In July, Judy became ill, too. Worried that she had contracted hepatitis from him, Van brought her to San Francisco General Hospital on July 30.

      Judy was diagnosed with hepatitis, but the physician also informed the fourteen-year-old that she was pregnant.

      When she was released from the hospital, she nervously called Verda.

      “Mother, I have to tell you something,” she said.

      “What now?” Verda snapped, irate that Judy had not contacted her since she had run away. “Where have you been? I’ve been worried sick.”

      “We went to Mexico, but there was an earthquake and we had to come back,” Judy said nervously. “And I’m pregnant. Three months. Mother, I’m scared.”

      Verda’s tone became reassuring, persuasive, as she asked Judy to come home so they could talk about it. “Bring some things for an overnight stay. We have to figure out what to do.”

      “Okay,” Judy said. “I’ll have Van drive me.”

      When Judy and Van pulled up to the house at 1245 Seventh Avenue, Verda was waiting. Although Van had scanned the area, he had not seen the police cars hidden around the corner from the house. The officers waited until Van got out of the car before they confronted him.

      “Earl Van Best, you are under arrest for child stealing,” one officer said, grabbing Van and pulling his arms behind his back. Judy struggled with the officer as he clamped the handcuffs tightly around my father’s wrists.

      Crying, she watched the police take him away.

      “How could you do this?” she screamed at her mother as Verda herded her into the house.

      “How could you?” Verda answered.

      My mother was sent back to the Youth Guidance Center.

      My father was placed in a cell on the sixth floor of the Hall of Justice. He was sitting on his bunk, contemplating his next move, when a handsome young man walked up.

      “Mr. Best, might I have a word with you?”

      Van looked at him questioningly, wondering if he was a lawyer. “I’m Paul Avery, with the San Francisco Chronicle,” the man said. “Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?”

      Van shook his head.

      Avery pulled out his notebook. “Where did you meet Judy?” he asked.

      “At Herbert’s Sherbet Shoppe. She was there … beautiful and sweet,” Avery would later quote Van as saying.

      “But she was only fourteen,” Avery said.

      “That didn’t matter.”

      Over the next half hour, Van told Avery the whole story.

      “He Found Love in Ice Cream Parlor,” read the headline of the San Francisco Chronicle on August 1, 1962. Pictures of Van and Judy were splashed across the page, accompanied by an article depicting their romance. “At the moment, several sets of steel bars and more than a mile in distance separate Van and his one-time wife, Judy Chandler,” Avery wrote before describing how the now twenty-eight-year-old man had fallen in love with a teenager.

      When Van saw the article, he was furious. He didn’t like the way Avery had portrayed him as if he were some old, balding child molester. Avery would later dub their love affair “The Ice Cream Romance.” Van would never forgive him for mocking his love for Judy.

      Other newspapers followed suit.

      The San Francisco Examiner reported that “the mild-mannered, bespectacled son of a Midwest minister sat in his cell at city prison yesterday and wept for his bride – blonde, 14, and pregnant.”