Socrates Club headquarters in Glendale

Socrates Club headquarters in Glendale is the home of Alice Zoghbie as well as the office of the right-to-die organization she leads. That overlap gives the location a practical role in the investigation of Eldon Mate’s murder: Zoghbie’s home is where police try to reach her after learning that she rented the van associated with Mate, and where detectives later meet her in person. The place is at once a private residence, an organizational address, and a point of access to a witness whose actions connect the club to the case.

Home and organizational address

The headquarters is on Glenmont Circle in Glendale, in the northern hills. It is identified as Zoghbie’s home and as the Socrates Club’s office; the organization’s answering message confirms the connection, and police treat the residence as both a personal address and a place to seek club business. That dual use matters to the inquiry. When Zoghbie is abroad, a call to her home reaches the club’s voice mail, while a police visit finds no one there.

The club’s public-facing materials present it as a right-to-die organization. Its homepage bears the sculpted head of the Greek philosopher Socrates, encircled by a wreath the investigator assumes is hemlock. The mission statement advocates the “personal ownership of life, unfettered by the outmoded and barbaric conventions foisted upon society by organized religion.” A hundred-dollar membership fee offers notification of events and other benefits, with payment accepted by several credit cards. The website thus gives the house’s institutional role a visible counterpart: the residence is not merely where its president happens to live, but the headquarters from which the club identifies itself and solicits members.

Zoghbie’s standing within humanist organizations also helps establish that role. She had been treasurer of the Secular Humanist Infantry and is now president of the Socrates Club. The location therefore belongs to an organization with a stated public program, while its connection to the murder investigation arises through a much more concrete transaction: the rental of a van.

Exterior and approach

The house is described as a vanilla-stucco English country house on a modest lot. A copper rooster weather vane sits above the entry turret; white pullback drapes frame immaculate mullioned windows, and a flagstone path leads to an iron canopy and carved-oak door. Flowers are arranged in descending bands: statice with purple blooms, multicolored impatiens, and a low edging of creeping white blossom. The measured presentation of the grounds makes the approach unusually specific in the account of a police visit.

A white Audi stands in the cobblestoned driveway beneath a young, carefully shaped podocarpus that is still staked. Across the path is a larger, similarly trimmed sycamore. The lawn appears almost spray-painted green in the sunlight. Yet the sycamore has begun to shed its leaves, scattering rusty brown across the grass and stone. The narrative singles out that small irregularity as the only sign that not everything can be controlled. The contrast is grounded in the visible grounds themselves: formal care shapes the scene, but seasonal change leaves its mark.

At the entrance, the door knocker is a large brass goat’s head. Milo Sturgis lifts the front of the face; its jaw falls and sends vibrations through the oak door. The door opens before the sound dies. Alice Zoghbie greets the detectives, offers a firm, dry handshake to both, and invites them inside. The approach moves from a carefully composed exterior to an immediate, direct encounter; the house is not an inaccessible club building but a functioning home whose occupant answers the door herself.

The address in the murder inquiry

The headquarters first acquires investigative importance through the van rental. Milo Sturgis reports that the rental paperwork was made out to Zoghbie. She had left for Amsterdam on Saturday to attend a humanist convention, and the trip placed her outside the country as the investigators followed the van’s connection to Mate. The account also indicates that she had rented a van before because there were sometimes problems when Mate appeared at the rental company. Her role is therefore not simply that of the club’s president: her name is on the paperwork for a vehicle linked to the case, and she says she had acted as renter on earlier occasions as well.

While Zoghbie is away, Milo calls her home, which also serves as the Socrates Club office, and reaches voice mail. Glendale police drive by but find no one at the house. Her message says she expects to return in a week, and Milo adds her to his list of people to contact. The office’s ordinary functions—receiving calls and carrying a message—become part of the police effort to locate her, but the empty residence cannot answer questions about the rental.

The investigators later go to the Glenmont address, which Milo recites as their meeting place. Alex Delaware recognizes it as the club headquarters and recalls that its website solicits hundred-dollar memberships and accepts credit cards. At the house, the detectives ask Zoghbie about the weekend Mate was murdered. She confirms that she rented the van and explains that she had done so before when Mate encountered trouble with rental companies. The conversation at the residence turns an earlier lead in the paperwork into testimony from the person named on it.

Narrative significance

The headquarters links the Socrates Club’s stated beliefs to the practical circumstances of the case without making the two identical. The club’s language concerns personal ownership of life and resistance to religious conventions; the van rental is a separate, specific act that brings its president into the murder inquiry. The house makes that connection legible because its dual identity as home and office gives the detectives a place to seek Zoghbie both as an individual and as the head of the organization.

The location also frames the difference between absence and access. During Zoghbie’s trip, the phone message and empty house establish that the investigators cannot yet question her. On their later visit, the same address yields a face-to-face meeting and her confirmation of the rental. The landscaped approach, the goat-headed knocker, and the quick opening of the door make the encounter concrete, while the conversation supplies the case-relevant fact. As a setting, the headquarters is important less for a hidden interior or dramatic confrontation than for its convergence of domestic space, organizational identity, and investigative pursuit.