A LOOK BACK:

Prize fighter Billy Papke was a terror in the ring.

Known during his prolific boxing career as the Illinois Thunderbolt, he once sucker punched an opponent as he stepped forward to touch gloves with him before a title match in 1908.

A one-time middleweight champion of the world, Papke had a fiery disposition that was both his greatest asset and his downfall.

“The same stubborn will which took him to the heights in the prize ring made it impossible for him to accept defeat in his domestic affairs,” H.B. Murray, a former manager and friend of the boxer, told the Los Angeles Times in 1936.

Papke’s prizefighting days were long over by Thanksgiving Day of 1936, when he burst into his estranged wife’s Balboa Island home and fatally shot her in the chest before turning the gun on himself.

Edna Papke had been living in an apartment at 214 Ruby St. on Balboa Island for about a month at the time of the shooting, and lived in fear of her estranged husband, her friends told the Los Angles Times in an article dated Nov. 28, 1936.

“Desperate because of repeated threats against her life, Mrs. Papke was to go to Los Angeles this morning to get authorities to protect her,” Maude Lathrum, a Newport Beach school teacher and friend of Edna Papke said the day after the shooting.

“Not knowing of the tragedy, I called her home to ask when she wanted to leave. I found out it was too late. Mr. Papke had killed her and himself,” Lathrum said.

A neighbor was visiting Edna Papke on Thanksgiving when there was a knock at the door.

“Is Mommy here?” Billy Papke asked as he entered the apartment, neighbor Helen Cabanne told the Los Angeles Times in an article dated Nov. 28, 1936.

“I was terrified, because I knew of the threats Papke had made,” Cabanne said.

Billy Papke drew a .38-caliber revolver, pressed it against his wife’s chest and fired as Cabanne looked on.

Cabanne fled the apartment after the first shot, and heard two more gun blasts as she ran down a flight of stairs, the Los Angeles Times reported. Two more shots rang out as she hid in the garage.

When police arrived, they found Billy Papke dead with three bullet wounds to the chest, still clutching the revolver, his slain wife by his side.

Billy Papke had been trying to reconcile with his wife, who had began divorce proceedings before the shooting, according to contemporary news accounts.

“’I’ll get her back if I have to use a gun on her and me,’” Murray recalled the boxer once told him.

Reporter BRIANNA BAILEY may be reached at (714) 966-4625 or at [email protected].