A Bizarre Halloween 'Trick-Or-Treat Murder' Haunts LA Residents Decades Later

When his doorbell rang at 11:30 on Oct. 31, 1957, Peter Fabiano thought it was a trick-or-treater’s last-ditch effort to collect more candy before the clock struck midnight on Halloween.

The 35-year-old Los Angeles beauty shop owner had just joined his wife, Betty, 38, in bed. He sat up, slid on his robe and strode to answer. When he opened the front door of their suburban Sun Valley ranch house, he chuckled at the costumed figure.

“Isn’t it a little late for this?” he asked.

The late-night visitor was carrying a bag, but it didn’t contain the sugary spoils from a night spent going door-to-door asking for treats.

The paper sack actually contained a .38-caliber revolver, which the stranger pointed straight at Fabiano’s chest. They pulled the trigger and shot him at point-blank range.

Betty heard a noise like a “loud pop” and later testified that she heard her husband say, “I’m shot.” She rushed into the living room, where she was joined by her 15-year-old daughter, Judy Solomon. To their horror, they found Fabiano sprawled on the rug, clutching his chest. There was no sign of the shooter.

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The Sun Valley house where Peter Fabiano was fatally shot on his doorstep on Oct. 31, 1957 (photographed in 2011).

Judy ran for help. She didn’t have to go far — a police officer lived two doors down. He summoned the police and an ambulance. Fabiano was later pronounced dead at the hospital. A coroner determined that he died from massive internal bleeding from a gunshot wound to the stomach.

Betty initially told police that she had heard two men outside. Oddly, she said, one of them sounded like he was “impersonating a woman.” Judy said she also heard the conversation.

Moments after the gunshot, Betty said she heard a car speeding away. A 15-year-old boy on his “late trick-or-treat rounds” told police he had seen a fast-moving car in the neighborhood — which would eventually prove to be a crucial clue.

Police couldn’t find a discernible motive for the killing. The Fabianos, who together owned and operated two beauty salons in the area, were well-liked and respected in their San Fernando Valley community. Was Fabiano the intended victim? Was it a random crime? Or was the killer closer to home?

The answer proved to be more baffling and sinister than anyone could possibly imagine.

Betty and Peter Fabiano

Peter Fabiano, a former bartender and Marine Corps veteran who served in World War II, had been married to Betty for about two and a half years. She had two children from a previous marriage, Judy and her 17-year-old brother, Richard.

Judy said in a court hearing that her stepfather had picked her up from a Halloween party at about 10:30 that night, and the two stopped for sandwiches before heading home around 11 p.m. The family had just turned out their lights and gone to bed when the doorbell rang.

At the time of the shooting, Richard Solomon was at the downtown bus depot heading for San Diego to report back for duty at a naval base.

Contemporaneous newspaper accounts described the Fabianos as wealthy owners of successful beauty shops. They each operated a separate salon, according to multiple news articles.

As part of their investigation, police conducted criminal background checks and found that in 1948 Fabiano had been convicted on a bookmaking charge when he was a bartender in LA. He received a suspended sentence of 180 days in jail.

Illegal betting has been linked to organized crime, and police initially considered whether Fabiano’s murder was a mob hit. However, aside from the bookmaking charge — which they ruled out as being tied to a larger operation — his record was clean.

So detectives narrowed their scope and began questioning the Fabianos’ friends, relatives and business acquaintances.

They started with his wife, who insisted that her husband had no enemies or personal conflicts, police said.

Fabiano’s sister in Lansing, Michigan, where Fabiano had grown up, told the local paper that she had no idea why anyone would want to kill her brother. She had visited the Fabianos a few months earlier and said they appeared to be “very happy” and their business were “doing nicely.”

Joan Rabel, 40, a freelance commercial photographer who had worked part-time at one of the couple’s salons, said she had known them for two years and described them as “two of my closest friends.” According to the Van Nuys News and Valley Green Sheet, she said she was a “frequent visitor” to the Fabianos’ home.

Before long, however, police made a discovery that would turn the case on its head — and only deepen the mystery.

The motive for the murder could be summed up in one word, they said: “jealousy.”

The Fabianos were having marital issues and briefly separated. During their separation, Betty stayed with Rabel, who was divorced and living alone.

The Fabianos eventually reconciled, on one condition, Betty later testified at a court hearing: Her husband demanded that she completely sever her relationship with Rabel and never see or speak to her — or about her — again.

Betty agreed and returned home. It was inconceivable that her ruptured friendship with Rabel would make her so furious that she’d want to murder her husband, she told police.

Rabel herself denied having any connection to the murder and said she was at home when Fabiano was shot.

But a friend of Rabel’s, Margaret Barrett, contradicted her account.

Barrett told detectives that Rabel had borrowed her car on Halloween night. Rabel insisted she’d only driven about four miles, but Barrett had monitored her car’s odometer, and it showed that Rabel had logged 37 miles. It was more than enough for a 26-mile round trip from her West Hollywood home to Sun Valley.

Moreover, investigators noted that Brennan’s car matched the description given by the young man who was still trick-or-treating when he saw the automobile speeding away from the Fabianos’ neighborhood.

The car yielded another clue, investigators said: A police chemist found similarities in samples of dirt collected from the vehicle and the soil outside the Fabianos’ home.

Rabel was arrested on Nov. 13 on suspicion of murder. After a court hearing, she was released on bail of $8,000 pending an arraignment scheduled for the following month.

Then a police tip took the case in a completely new direction.

The tipster led investigators to a downtown department store pay locker, where they found a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver. It contained a single bullet.

Ballistics tests confirmed it was the gun used in the murder, detectives said.

They traced the revolver to a gun shop in Pasadena. Records showed it had been purchased by a woman, along with just two bullets — but that woman was not Joan Rabel.

Instead, receipts indicated that Goldyne Pizer, 42, bought the firearm, saying she needed it for “home protection.” Like Rabel, she was divorced and lived by herself.

When questioned by police, Pizer made a full confession. She had fired the gun that killed Peter Fabiano — a man she had never met or even seen before.

Her motive was as bizarre as the crime itself.

Smiling person from a vintage-style photo — Obituary

Peter Fabiano

Although Fabiano was a complete stranger, Pizer told detectives that she had developed an “intense hatred” for him.

Pizer, it turned out, was pressured to murder him by a close friend: Joan Rabel.

Pizer, a hospital clerk, said she and Rabel had been friends for about three or four years, but it had only been in the past several months — since the Fabianos reconciled — that her friend had begun deriding Peter Fabiano.

Her complaints were incessant and began to dominate all their conversations, Pizer said.

“She painted him as a vile, evil man who wanted to destroy all people around him,” Pizer told detectives. Rabel accused him of mistreating his wife, stepdaughter and salon employees and selling drugs.

Rabel’s characterization of Fabiano was baseless, his widow and stepdaughter testified in a court hearing.

But Rabel convinced Pizer that only Fabiano’s death could end his alleged abuse, and her friend coerced her into killing him, she said. “She almost had me under a hypnotic spell,” Pizer said. (One writer dubbed Rabel a “Svengali in a skirt.”)

Together, the two plotted how to kill Fabiano and considered poisoning or stabbing him before deciding to shoot him, Pizer said. Eventually, Rabel drove Pizer to the Pasadena gun shop and gave her money to purchase the revolver. She bought only two bullets.

On the evening of Halloween, Rabel picked up Pizer and drove to the Fabianos’ home. They parked nearby and waited until the lights went out. Rabel sat behind the wheel while Pizer got out of the car, strode up the walkway and rang the doorbell. After shooting Fabiano, she rushed back to the car and Rabel sped away. (Betty and Judy apparently had misheard when they said two people were at the door.)

In their first court appearance, Pizer said she hadn’t seen Rabel since the night of the murder. After they returned home, she said, Rabel told her, “Forget you ever knew me.”

Betty Fabiano was never accused of being involved in the crime. Nor did she publicly express any regret or resentment of her husband for the end of her friendship with Rabel.

On Dec. 9, 1957, Pizer was arraigned on a murder charge. Rabel was rearrested and charged with first-degree murder — this time, like Pizer, she was ordered to be held without bail. She continued to maintain her innocence.

Several weeks later, both women were indicted by a grand jury. Rabel pleaded not guilty, while Pizer, despite her well-publicized confession, pleaded not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity.

But before their trial was set to commence the following spring, Rabel and Pizer pleaded guilty to reduced charges of second-degree murder. They were both sentenced to five years to life in prison.

It is unclear when they were released, but neither served out life sentences. LA residential addresses are listed in their death records — Rabel died at age 96, and Pizer lived to be 83. In 1971, Pizer was elected secretary of the LA Miracle Mile chapter of the Business and Professional Women’s Club, according to a notice in the LA Times.

Betty Fabiano died in August 1999 at age 81, according to her obituary. There are no public records of her, Pizer or Rabel having remarried.

Although the criminal case was solved, the exact nature of the three women’s relationships to one another remains a mystery.

Police characterized Rabel’s motive as “jealousy” without expressly stating its basis. Some tabloids hinted at romantic involvements and suggested that the degree of hostility expressed by Peter Fabiano toward Rabel was outsized for a platonic friendship. If the women were more intimately involved, they kept the details to themselves.

Decades later, the peculiar “trick-or-treat murder” continues to haunt Sun Valley — and possibly make residents think twice about opening their doors for late-night Halloween visitors.

Sources:Fresno Bee: Dec. 8, 1957LA Evening Citizen News: Nov. 1, 1957; Feb. 3, 1958; March 6, 1958; March 11, 1958LA Mirror: April 19, 1958LA Times: Nov. 2, 1957; Nov. 22, 1957; Dec. 7, 1957; Dec. 10, 1957Lansing State Journal: Nov. 2, 1957Long Beach Press-Telegram: Nov. 13, 1957; Dec. 7, 1957Modesto Bee: Nov. 2, 1957Santa Barbara News-Press: Nov. 1, 1957Stockton Record: March 12, 1958Van Nuys News and Valley Green Sheet: Nov. 1, 1957; Nov. 3, 1957; Dec. 22, 1957Valley Times: Nov. 1, 1957; Nov. 13, 1957; Dec. 11, 1957

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