Note: This is an encore post from 2006.

Oct. 13, 1907
Los Angeles

Gunmen imported from out of town by the Hop Sing Tong entered the tailor shop of Lem Sing at 806 Juan St. in Chinatown and under the pretense of having some clothing made, wounded him when he turned to reach for some material. The men also killed Wong Goon Kor, who was, according to The Times, “lying in a bunk under the influence of opium.”

The three fleeing men threw away their revolvers as they ran down Marchesault Street, through Stab in the Back Alley to Apablasa Street, where they got into a vegetable wagon that took them away.

But apparently unfamiliar with Chinatown, the gunmen went into the wrong business, mistaking it for the shop at 802 Juan St. run by Joe Fong.

At the hospital, Sing told police: “I owe Chan Mon money. He asked me for it today. Then he sent Deputy Constable McCullock to collect it. I could not pay. Then three Hop Sing Tong men came to my store and asked for clothes. When I turned around, they shot me and my tailor. I fell upon the floor and remember no more until I was brought in here.

“One of the men was about 20 years old, had no queue and was about 5 feet, 6 inches tall and wore American clothes. The second man was about 30 years old and had chin whiskers, and the third man was about 43 years old and wore a queue. He did the shooting.”

Gravely wounded, Sing died the next day after identifying three men as the assailants, although his statement was questioned because he had previously identified three different men.

A few days later, an arraignment was held for Charley Wing of Portland, Ore., a man of mixed ancestry described by The Times as “a man of good education, speaks English fluently and is a power among the yellow men. His hair is brown, his mustache light brown and there is but little appearance of the Oriental in his makeup. In court yesterday, he looked more like some student of theology than like a murderous highbinder.”

Charges were also filed against Charley Sam Foo Ling, known as “the Bakersfield Kid,” and Wong Chung.

The Times noted: “Chinese tong men yesterday buried the dead tong gladiators. From the Pierce Brothers’ morgue, a dismal procession wended its way to the Chinese Cemetery in Boyle Heights. There, the Chinese were interred, money being thrown into the caskets, together with food and paper prayers to see them safe on their journey to heaven.

“On top of the grave, other food was placed to attract the attention of evil spirits lingering near. The chief dish was a fine roast chicken. As soon as the Chinese left the cemetery, evil spirits in the form of barefooted Negro youngsters swarmed down upon the grave and carried off the roast fowl as a prize.”

Historic details like that are certainly vivid, and it’s nice to have them, but they make me wince at the same time.

Unfortunately, there is no further information on the three defendants in the tong killing.

Bonus fact: Apablasa Street was named for the owner of the rancho where the original Chinatown (now the site of Union Station) was built.

Read the Marsakster’s posts on the tong war here and here and here.

Note: This is an encore post from 2005 and originally appeared on the 1947project.

Echoes of Georgette Bauerdorf….

Paging through the Oct. 15, 1947, edition of The Times offers so many choices: meatless Tuesdays to send food to the starving people of Europe, thereby stemming the march of Communism; the new Buick’s Accurite Cylinder Boring, Fliteweight Pistons and Deepflex Seat Cushions; or Pasadenan Adolf Schleicher, who wants to the city to buy him a new canary after a city trash truck knocked down a birdcage hanging on his porch..

How about two “adults only” features at the Mission theater, 4238 S. Broadway, “Nude Ranch” and “Sins of Passion,” two movies so obscure that they’re not even in imdb.com? As a family paper, The Times refused to run the racy movie ads found in the Examiner.

A Proquest search for “Mission” and “Nude” turns up the gruesome May 23, 1945, killing of Vivian Simon, whose nude body was found under a palm tree at Mission Sanitarium, 4525 San Fernando Road, stabbed and beaten, with her underwear jammed down her throat.

Although the sanitarium was surrounded by a 12-foot-high barbed wire fence, Simon, 31, the wife of Syrian grocer James S. Simon of 1262 W. 25th St., and another patient escaped for drinks at a nearby bar with the help of one of the dishwashers, Candelaria Cabrillo.

Cabrillo and the other patient left, while Simon remained to have several more drinks with James O. Bullack, a 29-year-old ex-GI. Arrested wearing blood-spotted clothes outside his rooming house at 2062 Wollam St. with his suitcase packed, Bullack told police of taking Simon back to the sanitarium and “socking her in the jaw” when she “resisted his advances.”

Bullack, described as a tall, shy blond, was questioned in the 1944 murder of Bauerdorf, who was found in a bathtub with a rolled-up bandage jammed down her throat, but nothing apparently came of it. He was convicted in the Simon killing and sentenced to five years to life in prison. No James Bullack is listed in the
California Death Index or the Social Security Death Index. His whereabouts remains unknown.

Quote of the day: “Reckless attacks on liberals permitted by the House Committee on Un-American Activities in the past repeatedly have strengthened the hand of Communist agents. They have used such attacks to prove that our democracy is a frail and frightened thing and to proclaim that legitimate exposure of their activities must inevitably degenerate into a ruthless heresy hunt.”

Leon Henderson and Melvyn Douglas of Americans for Democratic Action, on the need to protect the civil rights of Hollywood actors and writers called to testify on Communist influences in the film industry.

Note: This is an encore post from 2006.

Oct. 14, 1907
Los Angeles

“In nine cases out of ten, where there is a shooting, there is also a woman,” said The Times.

In this case, there was Oscar E. Otto, a young chauffeur with a hot temper and a gun. There was his 19-year-old wife, the former Irene E. Jester, “a silly little creature with futile tears and French heels.” And there was J.C. Henderson, another chauffeur with a gun and better aim or more luck.

Untangling the story of this fatal triangle—at least it was a triangle in the mind of Mr. Otto if no one else—is difficult, in part because of the charges and countercharges and partly because the presses weren’t properly inked and much of the text is faint.

But a few things seem clear: In May, about the time of the Ottos’ first anniversary, Henderson was hired to take a man and two women from the Saxonia apartments to Fred Ward’s roadhouse on Mission Road, otherwise known as the East Side Athletic Club.

“Both women were introduced to him as single women and it was not until their return to the city, when one of the women refused to ride down Pico Street, that Henderson suspected she was married,” The Times said.

The next day, Henderson said, he received a phone call from Mrs. Otto, asking to meet him on Main Street. He said he barely recognized her because her face was swollen from a vicious beating. She asked him for $10 ($205.24 USD 2005), explaining that after her husband beat her, he ripped up her clothes and threw her out of the house.

Sometime later, she barged into Henderson’s hotel room and darted into a closet, claiming that her husband was out to kill her. Mr. Otto, although he was a smaller man, followed and beat Henderson viciously.

Of course, Mr. Otto had a different story. He sued Henderson for alienation of affection in August, charging that his wife and Henderson had gone for many long drives, and visited resorts and cafes, where his wife “drank intoxicating liquors to excess,” The Times said.

Since then, witnesses at the murder trial said, Otto had talked constantly of revenge. On the night of the killing, a friend said, the two of them had gone for a drive to East 9th Street and Tennessee, where Otto said he had an appointment with a man.

Finding Henderson (at right) at the garage at 9th and Tennessee, Otto said: “There’s the _______,” according to The Times. Although it was too dark to see much, the friend said, he noticed a man backing away from Otto, who cried out: “I am shot!” Otto ran back to the car, drove almost two blocks and collapsed, saying, “Get a doctor.”

Henderson testified that he had been driving down Broadway when Otto jumped on the running board and threatened to kill him before jumping off at 9th Street. Henderson said he took his car to the garage on Tennessee Street and spent about 15 minutes putting it away when Otto arrived.

As Otto jumped out of his car, Henderson said, he saw a flash of light and was sure that Otto had fired at him. He was afraid to run because Otto might shoot him in the back, so Henderson stood with his hand on the pistol in his pocket until Otto got close.

“He called out as he came near and as I kept backing away, ‘Pull it out, you _______. That’s just what I want. Pull it out,’ ” Henderson said.

“I backed as far as I could, and then, as he reached out his left hand and struck me on the face, I fired. I did not dare to take my hand away from my gun as I thought it was his intention to provoke me into doing so and that then he would shoot me.”

“I did not think that I had hit him and it was not until he had run back to within 15 feet of his auto that I heard him say, ‘I’m shot.’ Still, I thought he had only been hit slightly. I did not fire but once as I was satisfied when I saw him retreat.”

The jury in Henderson’s murder trial returned a verdict in two minutes: Not guilty.

And in an intriguing but unexplained footnote to the story, shortly before he died, Otto asked to see Miss Jossie Golman. She said he was nothing to her but a friend and refused to go.

Note: This is an encore post from 2005 and originally appeared on the 1947project.

Bits of clothing found with a child’s skeleton in a small ravine in Orange County yesterday were identified as belonging to 6-year-old Rochelle Gluskoter, who was kidnapped Feb. 15, 1946.

The identification was made by the child’s parents, Abe and Miriam Gluskoter.

Thus came the first tangible clue in the abduction case which has baffled investigators for nearly two years.

The Gluskoters, who now live at 913 E. 87th St., appeared at the sheriff’s Bureau of Investigation accompanied by Inspector J. Gordon Bowers, who directed investigation in the days following the little girl’s disappearance.

::

Although the murder of Rochelle Gluskoter has been completely forgotten today, it is one of the worst cases of the postwar period. Rochelle, a brown-haired, brown-eyed girl of 6, was playing in the yard of a neighbor at 1113 E. 85th St. when she got into a black convertible coupe driven by a man in his 30s. She was never seen again.

In the days that followed, Los Angeles was consumed in a massive search for the girl. Investigators went house to house, examined riverbeds and sewers, rounded up known sex offenders in the area and checked on phantom sightings of young girls elsewhere in the city. Led by Eugene Biscailuz, the sheriff’s posse made a canvass on horseback of what were then large swaths of undeveloped land in South Los Angeles.

Nothing.

The newspapers ran stories about other horrible kidnappings of little girls: The 1924 slayings of May and Nina Martin by Scott Stone; the 1927 abduction and murder of Marian Parker by William Hickman; the 1937 sex killings of “the three babes of Inglewood” by Albert Dyer.
In March 1946, her parents, Abe and Miriam, finally opened their delicatessen at 8464 S. Central Ave., postponed when Rochelle was kidnapped the day before it was scheduled to open.

And then Bonito Cabrera, hunting rabbits off Santiago Boulevard about three miles from Irvine Lake, found the bones, so weathered that investigators could never determine a cause of death.

“That’s my baby’s dress,” Miriam said, breaking down in sobs as she looked at the mildewed shreds of a small tweed coat and red print dress laid out on a table. And yet she remained puzzled: Rochelle was wearing nearly new shoes when she disappeared, but now they were badly worn.

Men were questioned over the years, but nothing ever came of it and the Gluskoters eventually left Los Angeles. The case remains unsolved.
Rochelle was buried at Hillside Memorial Park.

Bonus factoids: Hickman and Dyer were hanged. Stone’s death sentence was commuted to life in prison without the possibility of parole. He was pardoned by Gov. Culbert L. Olson and released from prison in 1941 because of continuing questions about evidence used to convict him. Saying “I knew this day would come,” he was freed after 15 years and moved into a Salvation Army shelter in Los Angeles.

Quote of the day: “War is not inevitable, but unless we undergird the United Nations with spiritual power, in the tragic tomorrow it shall be remembered only as the ‘United Notions.’ ”
The Rev. Glenn R. Phillips, First Methodist Church of Hollywood

Note: This is an encore post from 2006.

Nov. 16, 1907
Los Angeles

Mrs. Amanda Cook (she is also identified as Jennie and Mary) came to Los Angeles from Boston in 1906 with two of her children in search of her husband, Frederick, a union plasterer and bricklayer. She advertised in the newspapers without success and finally took a job as a cook at the Juvenile Detention Home.

Persuaded by her cousin to seek a divorce, she hired attorney George W. MacKnight, who sought out her errant husband and began divorce proceedings.

One day, after being threatened with divorce, Frederick appeared at the juvenile home and upon seeing his wife, said: “What the hell did you come out here for? Why didn’t you stay with your folks in Boston?”

At his office, MacKnight attempted a reconciliation. When asked if he thought he should support his children, Frederick said: “Yes, but I blow in my money with the boys and cannot save a dollar for the kids.”

Frederick said he didn’t want to get a divorce, so MacKnight asked Amanda if she would take her husband back. “Fred, you know I’ll do that in a minute,” she said. Frederick agreed to rent a house for them as long as MacKnight dropped the case—but the lawyer refused until Frederick made good on his promise.

As soon as the Cooks got into the hallway, Frederick said: “Do you think I’m going to be damn fool enough to support you and those kids?”

His wife replied: “Oh, Fred, you don’t mean that. Why, you just promised to take us back and get a little house for us all together.”

“Well,” Frederick replied, “if you don’t make the lawyer of yours dismiss this case I’ll kill you and him and the judge, too, and if the bum police ever catch me, I’ll kill myself.”

Amanda got a divorce, telling her lawyer: “I’m not afraid of him because he has threatened to cut my throat or blow out my brains a thousand times.”

Frederick began plotting to kill her. His first idea was to murder her at juvenile hall by shooting through a hole he cut in a screen, but he fled after being caught putting a pistol in the opening.

The next idea was far more cunning. A champion roller-skater, Frederick went to a hairdresser on South Broadway, where he bought a false mustache and had his hair dyed, explaining that he was so well known in roller contests that he was prevented from entering.

On Aug. 27, 1906, he found Amanda on the fast streetcar from Santa Monica, sat next to her and shot her in the forehead, then stood up and shot her twice more. Several passengers grappled with him and got the gun, but Frederick swung free of the moving streetcar “near the Hammel and Denker ranch,” The Times said, and escaped.

Amanda’s bloody body was left between the seats as the car completed its rounds, slowly sliding down until “only the pathetic, shabby little shoes stuck out into the aisle to haunt those who made that terrible ride,” The Times said.

Frederick surrendered a year later in Fort Worth, Texas, claiming the shooting was authorized by “unwritten law” because he caught his wife with another man.

In 1908, he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison at San Quentin. As for the Cooks’ three children (an older child had been left with relatives in Boston) no record can be found.

Note: This is an encore post from 2005 and originally appeared on the 1947project.

Joyce, 13, came home that afternoon and told her father and stepmother what she had done. Her father, an auto body mechanic, ordered his wife and son not to say anything until he figured out what to do. The next morning, Joyce went to school as if nothing was wrong while her stepmother washed out her bloody clothes.

The next day, Joyce calmly faced four detectives, but collapsed in tears when her stepmother fell, sobbing, at her feet. Then she told her story.

She met 5-year-old Myretta Jones, who was going to the store for her mother. Joyce tagged along, then invited Myretta over to her house while she did some chores.
Later, the girls went to play pirate in a cave they dug at the Kern County Fairgrounds.

Once in the cave, Joyce ordered Myretta to undress, but Myretta refused, so Joyce slapped her until she obeyed. Once the crying girl was undressed, Joyce smashed her in the head with a heavy rock and a shovel until she was dead.

A sheriff’s posse, contacted by Myretta’s mother, searched until they found the girl. The coroner reported that she had been raped, so officers rounded up known sex offenders, staged roadblocks along major highways and launched a hunt for a photographer who supposedly made lewd remarks while selling photo packages door to door. Then someone remembered seeing Myretta with an older girl.

Joyce was sent to Camarillo for psychiatric evaluation and upon being pronounced sane, was tried as an adult. On May 27, 1948, she was sentenced to life in prison, first to be served at the Ventura School for Girls, and then to Tehachapi once she became of age.

Why did Joyce kill Myretta? She told the sheriff that she didn’t know.

Bonus factoid: Dr. George Hodel, 5121 Franklin Ave., reports that a burglar broke in a bedroom window and stole a 1,400-year-old Chinese sacrificial tablet. Dr. Hodel says the tablet was 11 by 6 by 3½ inches, had about 50 Chinese characters and was carved on dark, gray stone.

Note: This is an encore post from 2006.

Nov. 21, 1907
Los Angeles

The woman who threw her baby from an inbound train was arrested at her mother’s home at 12^th Street and San Pedro after the girl’s nurse contacted authorities, saying that she read about the incident in the newspaper and suspected the woman because she took the baby on a trip while leaving all the infant’s clothes at home.

Louise [or Louisa] Williams, who is in custody in San Bernardino, says the baby’s father “is a worthless mulatto, sometimes employed as a porter on the Salt Lake Overland trains,” according to The Times.

Despite initial reports that a passenger saw the infant thrown from the train and leaped off to rescue her, The Times says that the baby girl was found by a tramp who contacted Mr. Mattock, a nearby rancher. Mattock was afraid to move the injured baby without official permission, so left her there until he could contact police.

Mattock took the baby to his home, but she died of her injuries shortly after a doctor arrived.

On Feb. 19, 1908, Louise Williams pleaded guilty to manslaughter. Cramer B. Morris, her attorney, noted that Williams was only 17 and said she threw the baby off the train because “she was suddenly overwhelmed with the shame of meeting her mother and sisters at Los Angeles, who had not learned of her ruin.”

On March 2, 1908, Williams was sentenced to five years in San Quentin, despite testimony that she was mentally unstable. “After sentence was pronounced, women in the courtroom broke into heartbroken cries, but the girl smiled, apparently unaffected, The Times said.

Note: This is an encore post from 2006.

Nov. 23, 1907
South Pasadena

Warning: This is a grotesque, tragic story with graphic details.

Pasadena Detective Wallace H. Copping is investigating the murder of a young baby boy, whose half-eaten body was found in a pigpen on the Berry ranch in South Pasadena.

Authorities say the boy, weighing about 14 pounds and less than 10 days old (yes, quite a large baby by today’s standards), was discovered by Mrs. J.H. Anderson, whose husband leases the ranch. Apparently Mr. Anderson picked up the baby’s body as he made the rounds of about 20 homes gathering garbage to feed his pigs.

After the garbage was dumped into the pigpen, Mrs. Anderson “was surprised at the uproar among the swine and investigated.”

“To her horror, she saw the nude body of a baby, with the legs eaten away above the knees and the right arm torn away.” The Times said: “Mrs. Anderson risked her life to rush in and rescue the body of the infant.” Further investigation showed that the baby boy had been struck in the head with a hatchet.

Police dug through the debris, gathering anything that would identify the source of the garbage, and accompanied Anderson as he retraced his route, making inquiries at each home. The body was put on display at a local mortuary, with police taking the names of the hundreds of people who came in an unsuccessful attempt to identify the boy.

Police theorized that the mother had entrusted the baby to the father, who killed the boy rather than find it a loving home. Given the sensational publicity, they hoped that she would recognize the baby’s description and contact authorities. But unfortunately, The Times has nothing further about this case.

Bonus fact: Wallace H. Copping, a Spanish War veteran, died in 1949, at the age of 75.

Every so often, my curiosity gets the better of me and I venture out on the Internet to take the pulse of Black Dahlia theories.

On Tuesday, for example, I strolled over to rollingstone.com to see what it said about the Black Dahlia case and “I Am the Night.” The newly released trailer for the upcoming mini-series (“inspired by a true story!”) made my head explode and now that I’ve recovered I can see that Rolling Stone doesn’t bother with editors. See “Faith Hodel” for “Fauna Hodel” (now fixed)  and “Elizabeth Smart” for “Elizabeth Short.” Reporter Daniel Kreps clearly doesn’t believe in checking names, nor does anybody else at Rolling Stone.

So I decided to venture into Reddit.

Wow! The first entry is so crazy I’m not even going to link to it

This is from WestworldFan73, who did his research on “Wikipedia and whatnot”: Elizabeth Short was killed by John St. John? One of the most respected and famous detectives in the LAPD?

Seriously? Based on “Wikipedia and whatnot?”

I could go on, but my head just exploded again.

Note: This is an encore post from 2006.

Dec. 3, 1907
Los Angeles

Officer Patrick Lyons had been on the force for four months when he was shot in the head while trying to arrest two robbers a little after 11 p.m. at Central Avenue and 14th Street.

There’s no picture of him in The Times, and news stories say nothing about his past or his family. His superiors at University Station said the 30-year-old officer, who lived at 720 E. 5th St., had previously worked as a special patrolman and was “a most promising young policeman.” We know far more about the killer, Daniel Meskil, and his companion, Rolla Robe. They had barely met before they began the holdups that would climax in Lyons’ death.

Meskil arrived from Chicago a month earlier and had just rented a room at 933 S. Broadway when he shot himself in the left hand trying to catch a heavy revolver he knocked off a table. At the Receiving Hospital, doctors amputated portions of his index finger and thumb.

Investigation showed that Meskil had been the terror of the Nebraska town where he had grown up, inflicting violence on his family. He was frequently in trouble with the law and had served time in reform school. Meskil said he once killed a man by knocking the victim down a cliff, simply because he felt like it. A few days before the slaying, Officer Roller had searched Meskil because he looked suspicious. “For that I made up my mind to kill you just as soon as I got an easy chance,” Meskil said during his trial.

Robe, a union plasterer, said he met Meskil on Nov. 30 at the Arizona poolroom on Main, which served as the union hall. Meskil asked him to have a drink “and we went out and had several drinks, eight or 10, and Meskil paid for them because I was broke,” Robe said.

“Meskil seemed to have plenty of money and said he got it by holding people up, and that the Los Angeles police were easy, and he asked me to join him in getting a place that night and said I need not be seen. I told him I was not in that business but at last I said I would join him as I was broke.”

More drinks followed, and Meskil went into Hoegee’s hardware store, where he bought an old Colt Bisley .45 with an outdated box of black powder cartridges. Then they went to hold up Gerleman’s market at 813 S. Central Ave., where Robe used to work, only to be run off when the owner’s daughter yelled “Here come two policemen!”

The men fled in the market’s horse-drawn wagon, which they crashed trying to avoid a streetcar, then went to a winery at 14th and Central. In scooping money from the cash drawer, Robe scattered dimes all over the floor and Meskil forced him to pick up the money, saying: “Damn you; if you do a job like that again I’ll kill you.”

Lyons was standing across the street and saw the men. Winery owner Arthur Grosser said he heard Lyons order: “Throw up your hands. Give me that gun or I’ll kill you.” As Lyons searched Robe, Meskil drew the Colt .45 and shot the officer. Grosser said he saw Lyons “lying on the sidewalk with a gaping wound in his forehead, one eye shot out and the blood was running in a thin stream to the gutter.” The men fled, although Robe was quickly captured.

During the autopsy, investigators recovered fragments of the bullet, which shattered when it hit Lyons’ skull. By weight, police determined that it was too heavy to have been from Robe’s .38, but had been fired from a .45. Because of the old, caked grease on the bullet fragments, investigators determined that it was an obsolete military cartridge and soon located receipts from the sale at Hoegee’s store, the only place in town where such ammunition was sold. A search was begun for a man missing a left index finger and thumb.

Walking his beat the next day, Officer Anthony Connelly noticed a suspicious stranger watching a game of checkers in a poolroom at 7th Street and Central. Making sure he had his pistol ready, Connelly asked to see the man’s left hand, which was in a pocket. “What the hell business is it of yours?” the man asked.

As soon as Connelly pulled out the man’s left hand, Miskel drew a pistol and the men fought, but Connelly was able to jam his hand against the hammer of the gun so that it wouldn’t fire. “Billiard cues were scattered about the room and everything breakable had been broken,” The Times said. Meskil’s fight for his life ended when Connelly yelled at one of the men to help and someone cracked Meskil on the head with a pool cue.

The men were convicted of Lyons’ murder. Robe was sentenced to life in prison and Meskil was sent to the gallows. It was sometimes thought that Meskil would undergo a jailhouse conversion as he was frequently visited by gospel singers and ministers. “One day a preacher asked Meskil to pray with him in the jail office,” The Times said. “They both got down on their knees and the murderer arose with tears streaming down his face.”

“I never heard about that before,” Meskil said. “And that is as near conversion as he ever got,” The Times said.

At San Quentin, Meskil became known as one of the hardest and toughest men, often attacking his cellmates. There were the usual appeals and for a time it looked like Meskil would not be executed. But then a final date was set.

Before he could be hanged, Meskil tried to commit suicide by escaping from his cell and jumping from the roof. He spent the last months of his life dying by inches in constant pain with “tuberculosis of the spine” as a result of breaking his back.

“He shrieks in agony until given opiates,” The Times says.

Note: This is an encore post from 2006.

Here’s a publicity still of “Maddy” Comfort from “Kiss Me Deadly” for sale on EBay. Her name is also spelled “Mattie” and “Mady.”

Comfort is referred to in the Los Angeles County district attorney’s files on George Hodel. Investigators checking on his possible involvement in the Black Dahlia murder discovered two photos of her, one by herself in which she is nude and another in which she and George Hodel are holding a cat.

When shown the photos, Hodel’s former wife Dorothy was unable to identify the model. But she is identified elsewhere in the district attorney’s files as “Mattie Comfort, 4028 W. 28th St. RE 2-0207 HO 4-0266.”

By the way, the woman in one of the photos that Steve Hodel claims shows Elizabeth Short has positively been identified as Marya Marco a.k.a. Maria San Marco. Just as I’ve been saying from Day One. I don’t read Steve Hodel’s website, but people who do informed me that Hodel says Marco recognized herself in publicity photos about the case and contacted him. As with all the important witnesses in “Avenger,” she is given a phony a name.

Here’s another picture of Comfort in a screen grab from “Kiss Me Deadly.”

And another photo for sale on EBay:

Note: This is an encore post from 2005 and originally appeared on the 1947project.

The Times editorialized:

Kessel and Cannon were two of five convicts who twisted a wire around the warden’s neck and dragged him into the prison yard, ordering him, on pain of death, to command the tower guards to throw down their rifles. Instead, Larkin shouted to the guards to pay no attention to him but to do their duty. As a result, the heroic warden was stabbed 12 times in the abdomen with knives made from rusty files. The time gained by his resistance was enough to muster the rest of the prison forces….

As against the 12 and 15 minutes Kessel and Cannon resisted death, Larkin lingered 108 hours. They were mercifully unconscious; their victim was conscious and in agony practically to the end. Their deaths were easy; his—from infected abdominal wounds—was horrible.

Note: “Little Shoes,” about the murders of three little girls, may not be everybody’s idea of an appropriate holiday gift, but it is more than a “true crime” book. In “Little Shoes” Pamela Everett explores her family’s tragic history in one of Los Angeles’ biggest cases of the 1930s, and she raises compelling questions about the guilt of Albert Dyer, who was hanged for the killings.

A family’s history is tricky even in the best of circumstances; the past may be sanitized and rewritten for consumption by the next generation. When tragedy is involved, family stories become murky or are simply locked away.

So it was with the tale of the “Three Babes of Inglewood”:  Madeline Everett, 7;  her sister Melba, 9; and their playmate, Jeanette Stephens, 8; who were kidnapped from Centinela Park in Inglewood and killed June 26, 1937. The case, with the trial and execution of Albert Dyer, was one of the most sensational crimes of Los Angeles in the 1930s, along with the Harry Raymond bombing.

Pamela Everett, the niece of Madeline and Melba, embarked on a painful and arduous journey of discovery in unlocking her family’s tragedy. (Note: I played a small role in connecting her with a woman who was 7 at the time and wrote a piece for the Daily Mirror on her recollections of the girls).

The result is “Little Shoes,” a book that blends family stories with the history of the case, going far beyond the overexposed genre of “true” crime into another dimension that is part memoir and part investigation.

Everett also raises intriguing questions about the innocence of Albert Dyer, whom I had always assumed was the killer. Dr. Joseph Paul De River, later known for the Leslie Dillon fiasco in the Black Dahlia case, interviewed Dyer and wrote about him in “The Sexual Criminal.” The extremely graphic nature of “Sexual Criminal,” even though the book was restricted to law enforcement personnel, was one of the factors in De River’s dismissal as LAPD psychiatrist.

“Little Shoes” was singled out by the New York Times in its Summer Reading feature.

The book is available at Book Soup and Vroman’s, as well as Amazon.

Note: This is an encore post from 2006.

Dec. 18, 1907
Los Angeles

Los Angeles County Coroner Roy S. Lanterman was arrested on charges of being drunk and disorderly at the Navajo, a bordello run by Ida Hastings, 309 Ord St. Hastings called police, who arrested Lanterman.

A Mills Seminary graduate nicknamed “Suicide Ida” because of her attempts to kill herself “every time she has a serious setback in her numerous ‘love’ affairs,” Hastings had contacted police earlier in the evening, asking for protection from Lanterman, saying that he had attacked her. Hastings notified police when Lanterman, who was married, returned to the bordello, went to her bedroom and after a fierce fight, removed several photographs of himself as well as a letter.

Upon arriving, police found Lanterman hiding in a bathroom and refusing to come out. When officers finally took him into custody, they discovered he was drunk and armed with two revolvers. They also seized the photographs and the letter Lanterman had taken from Hastings.

“The Hastings woman refused to make any statement of the affair when seen early this morning. She said the facts would probably come out in court,” The Times said.

Lanterman contended that he was summoned to the bordello because a woman was in hysterics and while attending her, he was arrested by a new and apparently inexperienced police officer.

The desk sergeant said: “He was drunk; good and drunk.” An observation corroborated by the arresting officers, the night jailer and several others at the police station.

Lanterman hired famed defense attorney Earl Rogers, but Hastings refused to appear in court to press charges, so the case was dropped. However, charges were later brought by prosecutor E.J. Fleming under an 1880 law demanding the dismissal of any official who is intoxicated while on duty.

Officials closed the Navajo, and in January 1908, Lanterman resigned as coroner. He was soon indicted on charges of making false statements about his election expenses and submitting fraudulent travel expenses to the Board of Supervisors. In April 1908, he was sentenced to a year in prison, but his conviction was overturned on appeal in 1909.

Lanterman’s legal troubles were far from over, however. He was freed on a technicality after being indicted in 1916 on charges of performing an abortion on 17-year-old Elizabeth Johnson. The Times said: “Dr. Lanterman has practiced in Los Angeles for many years and is one of the best-known members of the local medical fraternity. He has offices in the Grosse Building.”

He was arrested in 1917 on charges of performing a fatal abortion on Mrs. “Reggie” Regina Greenburg Evans of San Francisco, which he claimed was “spite work” by his political enemies. In her dying declaration, Evans told her brother that Lanterman performed the abortion, but she told others at County Hospital that she tried to perform it herself. He was found not guilty and after a petition drive, regained his medical license in 1921.

In 1918, he was accused of contributing to the delinquency of a minor, 20-year-old Marjorie Woodbury, during an outing to Malibu.

He and Dr. Paul Traxler were accused of murder in the 1929 death of film actress Delphine Walsh during an abortion. He was found not guilty, but lost his medical license for a second time.

He died in 1948 at the age of 79 in his home, 4420 Encinas Drive, La Canada, survived by his wife, Emily; and sons Lloyd and Frank. His services were conducted at Church of the Lighted Window, which his family helped found. The Lanterman mansion was turned into La Canada’s City Hall in 1985.

Bonus facts: His father, F.D. Lanterman, bought Rancho La Canada from the Verdugo family in 1875. The portion of the Glendale Freeway between the Ventura Freeway and La Canada is known as the Frank Lanterman Freeway in honor of the late state legislator, who served in the Assembly from 1950 to 1978.

Here are six reasons Dr. George Hodel did not kill Elizabeth Short that you will need to know before watching the TNT mini-series “I Am the Night” or listening to the eight-part podcast accompanying the production.

Reason No. 1: Dr. George Hodel was never “the prime suspect” or even “a prime suspect” in the Black Dahlia case.

Steve Hodel perpetually claims that his father was “the prime suspect” in the Black Dahlia case. This is a curious view in that Steve Hodel also says he never knew that his father was investigated in the murder.

To put the question in context, the LAPD considered everyone who ever had contact with Elizabeth Short to be a suspect, so there were hundreds of “suspects” who had to be eliminated. Also understand that there is nothing to show Dr. George Hodel and Elizabeth Short ever had contact (more about that later).

Dr. George Hodel was never publicly linked to the Black Dahlia case, not by the LAPD or by the newspapers, which covered the arrest or detention of every potential suspect.

The first person to publicly link Dr. George Hodel and the Black Dahlia case was the late Janice Knowlton (“Daddy Was the Black Dahlia Killer,”) posting on an Internet bulletin board Aug. 8, 1998, before Hodel’s death in 1999 and before publication of Steve Hodel’s “Black Dahlia Avenger” in 2003. Knowlton committed suicide the next year.

In truth, only one man was publicly identified as “a prime suspect” in the Black Dahlia case and that was Robert M. “Red” Manley, the traveling salesman who brought Elizabeth Short from San Diego to Los Angeles in January 1947, and he was cleared. The term occurs in the problematic March 28, 1971, article on the Black Dahlia case in the Los Angeles Times. Notice that The Times introduced the erroneous middle name “Ann,” which has permeated Black Dahlia material. Elizabeth Short had no middle name.

Besides Manley, there were two other main suspects: Cpl. Joseph Dumais (false confessor) and Leslie Dillon (cleared). One could argue that they were also “prime suspects.” But nobody else.

The term “prime suspect” in the Black Dahlia case appears one other time and that’s April 1, 1950, several days after the LAPD abandoned its surveillance of George Hodel’s home for lack of interest (March 27, 1950).

The George Hodel files Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 |Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37

The Times said: District attorney’s investigators Walter Morgan and Frank Jemison “declined to name the man they are seeking as the prime suspect, but indicated that he is the owner of the mysterious bloody clothing which has disappeared from police evidence lockers.”

After the Black Dahlia killing, many pieces of bloody clothing and other objects were turned over to investigators. Every item was found to be unrelated to the case.

Was Dr. George Hodel a “prime suspect?” No.

To be continued.

Here are six reasons Dr. George Hodel did not kill Elizabeth Short that you will need to know before watching the TNT mini-series “I Am the Night” or listening to the eight-part podcast accompanying the production.

Reason No. 2: George Hodel was found not guilty of molesting his daughter, Tamar.

Previously:

Reason No 1: George Hodel was never “a prime suspect” in the Black Dahlia case.

Steve Hodel perpetually cites the late Tamar Hodel’s molestation charges against their father; they are at the heart of his claim that his father was “a monster.”

But Steve Hodel whitewashes Tamar Hodel’s true nature:

During the proceedings, Tamar’s mother stated in an affidavit that her daughter was a “problem child for many years” and frequently accused men of molesting her. “Much of her abnormal behavior has had to do with stories and statements about sex,” the mother said.

Tamar’s mother sent her to live with Dr. Hodel with hopes that he could handle her, but Tamar filed charges of molestation against Dr. Hodel and more than a dozen students at Hollywood High School. Not one of the high school students was ever charged. All of this is swept under the rug in the “Black Dahlia Avenger” series of books.

Tamar Hodel was an incorrigible liar and problem child who made “unfounded complaints” and lodged mass accusations against her father and more than a dozen high school students. Did Dr. Hodel molest Tamar? The jury, which included eight women, said no.

To be continued.

The “minotaur love/death cult of Hollywood” is apparently getting a big play in “I Am the Night.” Oh dear.

Here are six reasons Dr. George Hodel did not kill Elizabeth Short that you will need to know before watching the TNT mini-series “I Am the Night” or listening to the eight-part podcast accompanying the production.

Reason No. 3: George Hodel had nothing more than a minor business transaction with Man Ray for a photo session. Dr. Hodel also had a book of photos.
__________
Correction: A previous version of this post said Dr. Hodel bought a book of photos. It’s unclear how he obtained the book.
__________

Previously:

Reason No 1: George Hodel was never “a prime suspect” in the Black Dahlia case.

Reason No. 2: George Hodel was found not guilty of morals charges.

A book of photos inscribed from Man Ray to George Hodel, 1949.

Steve Hodel perpetually claims that his father was an intimate friend of Man Ray. This supposedly close friendship is at the heart of Steve Hodel’s contention that Dr. Hodel’s admiration for Man Ray’s surrealistic artwork inspired the grotesque mutilation of the Black Dahlia. Steve Hodel says that Elizabeth Short’s body was Dr. Hodel’s “canvas” and that the extensive cutting and slashing of her body were “an homage” to Man Ray.

Steve Hodel’s claim arises from randomly flipping through a book of Man Ray’s photos, finding a 1934 picture of a man’s upper torso titled “The Minotaur,” done for the cover of a French magazine “The Minotaur” with virtually no circulation in the United States. Man Ray left the print in Paris when he fled to America during the war. There is virtually no way Dr. Hodel could have seen this photo (did I mention it was from 1934?), but Steve Hodel claims that “The Minotaur” somehow mimics the position of Elizabeth Short’s upper body as found at the crime scene.

From there, Steve Hodel has spun out an elaborate narrative of a close friendship between the two.

But it is impossible to independently confirm Steve Hodel’s claim.

In truth, there is nothing in Man Ray’s archives to confirm any connection to George Hodel whatsoever. And I could say the same about the papers of another supposed Dr. Hodel intimate friend, Ben Hecht.

George Hodel: Not appearing in the Naomi Savage Papers on Man Ray.

Nor does George Hodel appear in Man Ray’s autobiography “Self-Portrait.”

In other words, there is nothing in the fairly well-documented life of Man Ray to indicate any sort of relationship with Dr. Hodel.

George Hodel: Not appearing in the archives of supposed intimate friend Ben Hecht.

Also note that although “I Am the Night” has six episodes to explore George Hodel’s relationship with Man Ray, the cast list doesn’t show anyone in that role. Could it be that the Man Ray Trust refused to grant clearance to the production?

Was Dr. George Hodel a close friend of surrealist artist Man Ray? No.

To be continued.

Los Angeles, May 25, 1944: At a Shinto shrine near City Hall, Los Angeles Mayor Fletcher Bowron, second from left, Dr. George M. Uhl and Nicola Giulli of the city housing authority talk to black residents of Bronzeville. Courtesy of the Los Angeles Public Library.

Here are six reasons Dr. George Hodel did not kill Elizabeth Short that you will need to know before watching the TNT mini-series “I Am the Night” or listening to the eight-part podcast accompanying the production.

Reason No. 4: George Hodel operated a clinic serving poor African Americans living in Bronzeville, the nickname for Little Tokyo, left vacant by the internment of Americans of Japanese ancestry.

Previously:

Reason No 1: George Hodel was never “a prime suspect” in the Black Dahlia case.

Reason No. 2: George Hodel was found not guilty of morals charges.

Reason No. 3: George Hodel was not pals with Man Ray.

Steve Hodel perpetually claims that the powerful, ruling elite of Los Angeles came to Dr. Hodel’s nearby VD clinic in Little Tokyo for treatment.

It was Dr. Hodel’s supposed knowledge of their sex lives that gave him the power to get away with murder — not just of Elizabeth Short but lots of other women as well. (How did someone who held such power over the police and the courts of Los Angeles get himself arrested and tried on a morals charge? Steve Hodel doesn’t go there).

But to quote an online history of Bronzeville:

In an Aug. 10, 1943 mayor’s meeting report, Dr. George Uhl, Los Angeles City Health officer, stated that in Bronzeville/Little Tokyo “much tuberculosis and venereal diseases discovered” and that they had two public health nurses and two sanitary inspectors assigned to the area. Uhl also noted that the city health officer had written up more than 140 eviction and abatement notices in the area so that substandard living conditions could be cleaned up.

In 1944, the Southeast Area Community Health Association launched a $35,000 “Stop Disease” fund drive to prevent the spread of infectious diseases in the southeast part of Los Angeles. Pioneering African American businessman William Nickerson, president of the Golden State Insurance Company, was one of the first to donate and gave $1,000. The association targeted diphtheria, small pox, syphilis, gonorrhea and tuberculosis.

From March 31-April 3, 1944, Bronzeville/Little Tokyo residents could get free blood testing and view an educational movie at the Bronzeville Arcade, 316 East First Street. The clinic was offered through a joint venture between the Los Angeles Health Department; Dr. George Hill Hodel, chief of staff of the First Street Clinic, which was an office in the Nishi Hongwanji Temple; and Dr. Seymour Kaufman, founder of the Bronzeville Medical Center.

In truth, the clinic served the poor African American residents of nearby Bronzeville — as Little Tokyo was renamed during World War II. Recall that Los Angeles was a segregated city with legally enforced deed covenants, so few places were open to blacks. The internment of Americans of Japanese ancestry during the war left Little Tokyo vacant. The solution to a housing shortage and an influx of blacks fleeing Southern racism during the great migration: Let them live in the vacant Little Tokyo and rename it Bronzeville.

Did Dr. George Hodel run a clinic serving the wealthy and powerful elite of Los Angeles? No. He treated poor blacks fleeing racism in the South.

To be continued.

Here are six reasons Dr. George Hodel did not kill Elizabeth Short that you will need to know before watching the TNT mini-series “I Am the Night” or listening to the eight-part podcast accompanying the production.

Reason No. 5: Dr. George Hodel had no surgical practice in Los Angeles. He had no admitting privileges as a surgeon at any Los Angeles hospital.

Previously:

Reason No 1: George Hodel was never “a prime suspect” in the Black Dahlia case.

Reason No. 2: George Hodel was found not guilty of morals charges.

Reason No. 3: George Hodel was not pals with Man Ray.

Reason No. 4: George Hodel served the poor blacks of Bronzeville.

Steve Hodel perpetually claims that his father was a skilled surgeon. According to the original investigators, the skill with which Elizabeth Short was cut in half showed advanced medical knowledge. At the heart of Steve Hodel’s purported “case” against his father is the claim that Dr. Hodel was a skilled surgeon. As noted earlier, Steve Hodel claims that his father’s skillful bisection of the body – and mutilation – was done “in homage” to the surrealist art of Man Ray.

In truth, Dr. Hodel never practiced surgery in Los Angeles. (Nor was he a “Hollywood gynecologist,” as portrayed in “I Am the Night.”)

Dr. Hodel did not practice surgery in Los Angeles because he couldn’t. Dr. Hodel lacked the essential accreditation awarded by the American College of Surgeons, the surgeons professional  association. Without that credential, no hospital would let him operate.

In fact, Dr. Hodel had no admitting privileges as a surgeon at any Los Angeles hospital, a matter that Steve Hodel refuses to address because it’s inconvenient to his “Black Dahlia Avenger” narrative. Dr. Hodel’s practice was public health.

Dr. Hodel was not a practicing surgeon in Los Angeles.

To be continued.

Elizabeth Short contrasted with the unidentified woman found in George Hodel’s photo album. Not at all the same.

Here are six reasons Dr. George Hodel did not kill Elizabeth Short that you will need to know before watching the TNT mini-series “I Am the Night” or listening to the eight-part podcast accompanying the production.

Reason No. 6: Dr. George Hodel had no connection to Elizabeth Short.

Previously:

Reason No 1: George Hodel was never “a prime suspect” in the Black Dahlia case.

Reason No. 2: George Hodel was found not guilty of morals charges.

Reason No. 3: George Hodel was not pals with Man Ray.

Reason No. 4: George Hodel served the poor blacks of Bronzeville.

Reason No. 5: George Hodel had no surgical practice in Los Angeles.

Steve Hodel’s entire case against his father, the foundation on which he built the massive “Black Dahlia Avenger” franchise about Dr. Hodel being a serial killer,  stands on the claim that Dr. Hodel had a photo of Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia.

Steve Hodel originally claimed that two photos he found in his late father’s belongings are of Elizabeth Short. One photo was eliminated when the woman in the picture came forward and identified herself as Marya Marco. The woman in the other photo remains unidentified.

When pressed, Steve Hodel will say that it doesn’t matter whether the photos are of Elizabeth Short because they only served to get him interested in the case.

But he always — inevitably — circles around to say that he believes the remaining photo is of Elizabeth Short.

In truth, Elizabeth Short’s family issued a statement saying that neither of the photos are of Elizabeth Short. And they were merely confirming what would be obvious to anybody with good eyesight and thinking untainted by “confirmation bias.”

Even if it was, mere possession of a photo of Elizabeth Short doesn’t make anybody a killer. But it is a hard fact that neither of the two photos presented by Steve Hodel are of Elizabeth Short.

Steve Hodel is perpetually discovering “new evidence.” But without the foundation — that his father had a photo of Elizabeth Short — Steve Hodel’s massive “Black Dahlia Avenger” enterprise crashes to the ground.

Dr. Hodel was never a “prime suspect” in the Black Dahlia case.
Dr. Hodel was found not guilty of molesting Tamar Hodel.
Dr. Hodel was not close friends with Man Ray.
Dr. Hodel ran a clinic that treated impoverished blacks, not the wealthy elite.
Dr. Hodel was not a practicing surgeon.
Dr. Hodel did not have a picture of Elizabeth Short.

Anything else is a lie.