All he wanted to do was keep their dog, Roxy, out of the flowers.
Two weeks ago, aeronautical engineer Neil Thompson, 30, rigged up an electric wire to shock the boxer if
it got near the flowerbed of the home he shared with his wife, Mary Lynn, and
their young daughter, Pamela, at
14342
Figueras in La Mirada.
He plugged the system into an outlet in the garage and staked a wire around the
flowerbed. But he didn't have the right kind of fuse, so he improvised one, assuming that a 40-watt light bulb would provide enough resistance to reduce the current so it wasn't lethal.
When Thompson came home from work that night at 6:30, he went into the garage
and noticed that the system's warning light was on.
Instead of finding the dog, he discovered his wife lying face-down on the ground in a pool
of water with the her chest across the wire and a bump on her head. She had been
watering her flowers with a hose when she received an electric shock.
He called
the Fire Department, but it was too late. When she was declared dead at Carobil
Hospital, Thompson became hysterical and was placed under
sedation. They had been married three years. Until their daughter was born, Mary Lynn Thompson had tutored deaf children at the John Tracy Clinic.
I always enjoy looking at the fashion ads in old newspapers. The drawings give the pages a stylish, classic look that is impossible with photographs. (I swear, 1957 must have been the year of the dots in women's fashions).
Some anonymous Times writer had fun with this story about the Exotic Dancers
League. There are all sorts of gags about baring grievances, making motions
and getting things off their chests.
The story says the "gals" wanted to "bump" their weekly pay to $100 a week
($716.53 USD 2006), then they began "grinding" out complaints. And of course they were outnumbered by the press: nine dancers and 20
reporters.
The Times said the organization, headed by Jennie "The Bazoom Girl" Lee, wanted heaters in the
dressing rooms. The group was also trying to impose rules on mixing with patrons
of strip clubs and sought to limit dancers' performances to three a night. And
to raise money? A strip-a-thon.
Here's an ad from the Mirror that was considered too racy for The Times. Look
who's appearing at Strip City, Western and Pico:
Redd
Foxx.
A bus driver who hauls a cargo of housemaids to the Beverly Hills area daily on
his early morning run heard a conversation the other day that made him realize
life isn't always as orderly and legal as people might think.
Two women of about 50 got on his bus downtown and greeted each other warmly.
"I haven't seen you for about a year!" said one. "Where have you been?"
"Oh, I just work once in a while now," said the other. "I've got a baby."
"A baby? You?"
"Oh, someone gave it to me. She couldn't take care of it so she just gave it to
me. I got it when it was a week old."
"Well, where is it now?"
"I leave it with the woman across the street when I work."
"Well, is it yours? Have you adopted it?"
"Oh, we didn't bother about that. The mother didn't want it so we just took it
over. And it's such a pleasure. My husband and I just love it."
When I saw this ad, my first reaction was: "You have GOT to be kidding me."
My next reaction was: "Maybe it's still there!"
Alas, no. The Queens Arms at 16325 Ventura Blvd. has been replaced by a Ralphs
grocery store. And not even a Medieval-themed grocery store. What fun is that?
The Queens Arms was built by John and Chris Skoby, who also operated the Kings
Arms in Toluca Lake. The restaurant was designed by
Martin
Obzina, the art director on "House of Dracula" and "House of Frankenstein."
(OK, to be fair, he received Oscar nominations for "The Flame of New Orleans"
and "First Love.")
Here's restaurant columnist Ken Tichenor's description from the Mirror: "Obzina
built them a castle with turrets and spirals and huge doors and towering flaming
torches outside. Also plenty of parking space.
"Inside, he placed heavy wooden beams overhead and stained wood pickets
separating the three dining rooms and a wine cellar behind the bar and
fireplaces scattered about."
Chris Skoby died in 1998 at the age of 75. As far as I can tell, the Skoby family's last restaurant in
Los Angeles, at 20419
Devonshire in Chatsworth, is now a Denny's.
One of my favorite adventures while working on the
1947project
was revisiting old neighborhoods that I found in
The
Times real estate sections from 1907, a feature I called
"Architectural
Ramblings." Exploring the city, I discovered street after street of
100-year-old homes in the Adams district, Monrovia, Sierra Madre (which is
celebrating its centennial this year) and Angeleno Heights.
But since I grew up up in a 1956 split-level tract home, the ubiquitous and
banal 1950s developments held no allure for me. Then I ran across ads for
Rigoletto Village, which offered the prospect of comic relief from true crime.
Did the "Gilda model" have a pool? Did the "Duke model" have an attached garage?
(A close second was
Rebecca
Park at San Fernando Mission Boulevard and Haskell Avenue. Did the "Manderley model" have a boathouse? I suspect not).
First of all, Rigoletto Village is way out in the West Valley,
26
miles from the Times Building. That means it's past Tampa, past Winnetka,
past De Soto, past Canoga and past Topanga Canyon. And because the Ventura
Freeway was still under construction, that meant commuting by car on surface
streets.
Let's stroll see if we can learn anything.
As for architectural significance, here's proof that you can gut a 1950s tract
home and no one will care. If this were a Craftsman bungalow, preservationists
would be linking arms around the building and singing "We Shall Overcome." But since it's by architects Bert
Ameche (yes, that Don Ameche's brother) and Donal Engen, nobody is going to make
a fuss. The owner is adding 1,146 square feet, just about doubling the size of
the home.
As you'd imagine, some houses are in better shape than others. Many of the
garages have been converted to living space. These houses (in a choice of
"Contemporary" or "Hawaiian" design) originally cost $19,950 ($142,947.41 USD
2006) and range today from the low $600,000s to the mid-$700,000, according to
Zillow, although the home at
22861
Calabash sold in January for $371,500. That's Southern California real
estate for you.
And then, in the middle of all these 1950s tract homes, there's this. Would I
want to live here? No, but at least it's not anonymous.
This is what happens when you plant a palm tree too close to the garage.
As I get back on the Ventura Freeway for the drive home, I think about another
aspect to the distance offered by the West Valley, for if Rigoletto Village is
far from downtown Los Angeles, it's even farther from communities like Compton,
Inglewood and
Leimert
Park, which were slowly being integrated in the 1950s. Recall that when
Mayor Tom Bradley and his wife bought their first home in Leimert Park, they had
to use a white intermediary because of deed restrictions.
ps. Today, even here in the West Valley, you can find day laborers gathered on
corners at undercrossings beneath the Ventura Freeway.
A boy (and how anyone knows it was a boy is never explained) came across a
stalled car on the Southern Pacific right of way
near Valley
Boulevard and Boca Avenue in Alhambra. He ran along the tracks
to
Farnsworth
Avenue and flagged down the oncoming Sunset Limited, The Times says.
The boy's actions saved the life of the driver, William Frasie McKeehan, 21, who
was booked at the City Jail for being drunk.
Rather like the Lone Ranger, the boy left before giving police his name. As for
McKeehan, he died Aug. 20, 1989, at the age of 53, 22 more years than he would
have had if he hadn't been spared that night. Let's hope he
made use of them.
Let's park here and sit in the car for a minute. It's late, sometime between 11
p.m. on Jan. 3 and dawn on Jan. 4, 1957. The lights are on as if
someone's home. Hear the music? That's the record player. Let me warn you before
we go in that none of this will make any sense at all. Just a dumb little
murder.
Many streets in Alhambra are named for trees, like Poplar, Birch
and this one: South Elm. There's a pair of these little, boxy duplexes, both 3
years old, that look like they were built at the same time by the same
developer. In the picture above, 513 S. Elm St. is the front unit of the first duplex, and 517 S. Elm St. is the front unit of the second duplex. The matching
duplex on the end, 521 S. Elm St., was built in 1958. The Times says she was murdered around the back in
515.
OK, come on in. Keep your hands in your pockets and don't move anything. Someone
has already rummaged around.
That's her sitting in the hallway, leaning against the wall next to the telephone. Notice that it's off the hook. Her name is Susan Miller Mason. She's
28 and worked in Alhambra as a receptionist in the office of Dr. H.
Lee Berry, a physician and surgeon. Her husband is named Raymond and he's a
lineman. He's 30. I don't think they have any kids.
She's got a couple old injection marks on her butt and one that's fresh, which
is from the shot that killed her. The medical examiner will call it acute morphine
poisoning and says that based on the location, it's almost impossible that she gave
herself the injection. She had asthma and the combination of morphine and asthma might have been what killed her.
About 6 p.m. on Jan. 3, she went to a doctor's office out in the Valley for a shot
of cold vaccine in her left arm. When she got home, she and her husband had an
argument and she threw a flowerpot and her beaded key case. He left about 9:30 p.m., hit a few bars, spent the night in his car and went
to work the next morning.
Berry, who lives at 1208 S. Garfield Ave., will testify that she called him about 1 a.m. and said she felt itchy all over. According to Berry, she said "Just a minute," then her
voice trailed off and all he could hear was the music from the record player. He
figured she was drunk again.
According to The Times, he says that because her phone was off the hook, he
couldn't break the connection, so he had to go across the street to a hospital
and call one of her neighbors to check on her. The Mirror says that Berry got a busy signal because her phone was off the hook so he went across the street to use a phone.
Either way, Mrs. Lena Talercio, 519 S. Elm, will say that Berry called at 1:15 a.m. and asked her go over to Mason's home. Talercio will say the lights were
on and music was playing but Mason wouldn't come to the door.
In a few hours, according to The Times, Berry is going to call the Alhambra Police Department to check on Mason because she hasn't shown up for work, and Detectives
Edmund Chappell and Carl Hoffman will come out to investigate. The Mirror, meanwhile, says Mason hadn't shown up at work for two weeks.
I warned you it was complicated.
The medical examiner will say Mason died about 11 p.m.--flat on her back. That
means someone came along and propped her against the wall. Notice there's no
sign of the flowerpot or the key case. They're missing. And there's no
hypodermic needle anywhere. If she gave herself the shot, there should be a syringe someplace.
About 1:50 a.m. this morning, Jack Case, 517 S. Elm, will hear a man say: "Susie! Susie! Let me in!" And a woman is going to say: "Be quiet or you'll wake the neighbors." The record player is going to keep going until about 4:30 a.m., when someone will turn it down, according to Case.
At the inquest, Berry will say he had been treating her for about six or eight
weeks and had given her several shots in the buttocks, but hadn't kept any
records. He will say that he bought 10 syringes of morphine from two
Arizona men two years ago and turned over six of them to his attorney. He says he used two on an injured
horse. He will claim that he asked Mason to clean out his medical bag a couple
weeks ago and that when she was done, the two remaining morphine syringes were
missing.
According to the April 28, 1957, edition of The Times, Mason was a hypochondriac and often hired a cabdriver to take her
to doctors' offices all over Los Angeles, including the Valley, Pasadena, West
Los Angeles and Beverly Hills.
Berry's housekeeper, Elsie Otto, an immigrant from Brazil, is also going to
testify. Otto will say that at the time of the murder, Berry's wife was out of
town with one of their four children. She'll say that Berry went to his office
for 10 minutes between 6:30 p.m. and 7 p.m., got a phone call from Mrs. Berry
about 10:30 p.m. and went to bed about 11 p.m.
Mason's husband is going to testify that after police left, he found the missing
flowerpot behind the garage and his wife's key case in a kitchen drawer,
although the detectives are certain neither of those items was there when they
searched the house. The police will give him a polygraph test and he'll come back
clean.
Notice that Berry's housekeeper hasn't said anything about a 1 a.m. phone call
from Mason. Notice that we don't find out why Berry had Talercio's phone number. Maybe none of it came up at the inquest. Maybe The Times
didn't think any of it was important. Notice that Berry had a neighbor check on Mason and that he called the police, who found the body. He could have gone over to the house either time. It's only three miles away. Notice that Berry's housekeeper is a Brazilian immigrant. Just speculating, mind you, but if she weren't here legally she might be reluctant to rat out her boss.
Berry will also refuse to sign the death certificate, although we don't know why.
All we we know for sure is that somebody moved her after she died. And we know none of the stories add up.
According to the Medical Board of California, Herbert Lee Berry graduated from the University of Maryland Medical School in 1943. He died in 1997.
We better get going. The police will be here soon.
I have somehow managed to miss out on coverage of the "Headdress Ball" staged every year by
Las Floristas in which women wear the equivalent of Rose Parade floats on their heads in a fundraiser for children's charities.
Here's how they looked in 1957 in the newly renovated Cocoanut Grove at the Ambassador Hotel.
Above, Times society columnist Christy Fox, left, has a demure tiara while serving as TV announcer while Mrs. John M. Foley Jr. (recall that in the 1950s, married women had no first names), center, wears "Love Is Crown Jewel" and Mrs. James Powell displays "The Imperial Jewel."
Larry Harnisch. The leading Black Dahlia expert and a collaborator in the 1947project, Harnisch has been a copy editor at The Times since 1988. He has appeared on many TV shows discussing the Dahlia case, notably "James Ellroy's Feast of Death."
Join him for a spin through old Los Angeles in the Mirror's radio car. Keep your eyes open for Mickey Cohen and Tempest Storm. It's quite a ride.
The reporter's badge belonged to Sid Hughes (1908-1958), legendary reporter who worked at nearly every newspaper in Los Angeles.
Keith Thursby. Keith has been an editor at The Times in news, sports and design since 1986. The Rams moved to St. Louis on his first day as assistant sports editor of the paper's Orange County edition. He grew up in Norwalk and lives in Irvine.
All he wanted to do was keep their dog, Roxy, out of the flowers.
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Larry Harnisch. The leading Black Dahlia expert and a collaborator in the 1947project, Harnisch has been a copy editor at The Times since 1988. He has appeared on many TV shows discussing the Dahlia case, notably "James Ellroy's Feast of Death."
Join him for a spin through old Los Angeles in the Mirror's radio car. Keep your eyes open for Mickey Cohen and Tempest Storm. It's quite a ride.
The reporter's badge belonged to Sid Hughes (1908-1958), legendary reporter who worked at nearly every newspaper in Los Angeles.
Keith Thursby. Keith has been an editor at The Times in news, sports and design since 1986. The Rams moved to St. Louis on his first day as assistant sports editor of the paper's Orange County edition. He grew up in Norwalk and lives in Irvine.