Voices--the Albert Dyer case

 
Note: The murders of three little Inglewood girls was one of Los Angeles' most notorious case of the 1930s. Madeline Everett, 7,  her sister Melba, 9, and their playmate, Jeanette Stephens, 8, were lured to the Baldwin Hills by Albert Dyer, a WPA crossing guard, who raped and strangled the girls one at a time on June 26, 1937. Dyer was hanged  at San Quentin on Sept. 16, 1938. The girls are buried in unmarked graves at  Inglewood Park Cemetery.  

Recently, Theresa Pinamonti Zeigler recalled:

I was born Nov. 19, 1929, in a house on Kelso Street in Inglewood, the youngest of six children of an Italian immigrant family.  When I was a year old, my family moved to  805 S. Prairie Ave., across the street from where the Inglewood racetrack is located now.

It was a huge area of swampy land with ponds, rushes, cattails, trees and bushes.  A couple of my brothers and I  had a good time playing there.  I believe that the house we lived in was torn down in the '60s.

My dad had a grocery store on Market Street in Inglewood  called the Midnight store, but lost it during the Depression and subsequently worked for the WPA, building roads and bridges.

I was 7 1/2 years old at the time of the murders of three little girls, who were kidnapped by Albert Dyer from Centinela Park in Inglewood  on June 26, 1937.   

My sister Josephine and I had  walked to Centinela Park, which was over a mile from our home.  We were used to that long walk because we walked every day to St. John's school, which was approximately a mile from where we lived on Prairie Avenue.

On our way we passed by the Inglewood Park Cemetery,  and I  always peeked through the fence out of curiosity at all the large, numerous tombstones that I could see behind the chain-link fencing.

I did not know how to swim, but played in the plunge (swimming pool) with my older  sister Josephine watching over me.  She  was 14. Afterwards, my sister allowed me to play in the park  so my swimsuit could dry.
 

I played  with the three little girls by a huge pipe.  I am not sure but it could have been a drainage pipe in the park.  We played together digging  in the dirt, running in and out of the pipe chasing each other  laughing and giggling like little girls will do,  then my sister called me to go home. 

Later in the day, we heard the news of the kidnapping  of the three little girls and then later, finding their bodies in  Baldwin Hills which was a few miles from Centinela Park. [Note: The girls were found June 28, 1937].

I knew at the time, from their description of the little girls,  that they were the ones that I had been playing with  in Centinela Park.

 

One of our neighbors, a bachelor who lived with a married sister on Buckthorne Street around the corner from our house, was a suspect.  My sister tells me that the police questioned me about this bachelor and they  also found out that I had played with three little girls that matched the description of the missing children, and asked me about that also,  but I don't recall that specifically.

I do recall all the excitement in the neighborhood and all the grownups gathering out in the alleys behind their homes, and  some standing around on the sidewalks talking about the missing children.  This bachelor was suspected of the kidnapping because he used to give  his niece and a couple of us  little girls, who played with her, rides in the back of his pickup truck.

I do remember the rides since that was as much fun as riding in the rumble seat of a Ford.  The bachelor  was eventually cleared.  I know that it was a scary time and I remember hearing the adults saying that some men wanted to lynch the man while he was in jail.

Neumann on the Mideast, Part 1

Note: In early 1957, The Times sent UCLA professor Robert G. Neumann on a six-week tour of the Middle East. Neumann, who was later the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan and Morocco, wrote these stories upon his return. His son, Ronald, is U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan.

Part 1, March 6, 1957

Unruly son

May 5, 1957
Los Angeles

Life is miserable for the Bernstein family, 2499 Coolidge Ave. Nathan, 56, and his wife, Sadie, 43, work hard at an aircraft plant as they try to raise their three children. One son is in college and they have a 15-year-old daughter. But 13-year-old Jerrald is a problem. In fact there's so much strife in the home that Sadie took Jerrald to the West Los Angeles police station and drove away after telling the desk sergeant: "You take him--I don't want him anymore."

While Jerrald was given shelter at Juvenile Hall, Sadie sobbed out her story after being charged with child abandonment. She said she and Nathan had tried everything, including  marriage counseling and psychotherapy.

"Basically, he's a good kid and intelligent," she said. "But he's destructive. Everything he touches is destroyed."

Leaving Jerrald at the police station only caused more problems. Sadie was charged with child abandonment and Nathan was accused of striking a news photographer when he went to bail her out of jail.

In court, Jerrald testified that he had taken money from his mother, but it was because his allowance was 13 cents a week, a penny for every year of his age. He also admitted taking some candles, but explained that it was because his mother had removed the light bulbs from his room when he left them on. Jerrald also explained that he spent the night in the garage because he had a hideaway in the attic outfitted with a sleeping bag and air mattress.

We don't know what became of Jerrald. The Times says that the Jewish Big Brothers (now the Jewish Big Brothers and Big Sisters) expressed an interest in helping the Bernsteins and that Jerrald was eventually placed in a foster home.

The Bernstein house, meanwhile, was taken out by the Santa Monica Freeway.

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BMW

The good news: It's a BMW. The bad news: You wouldn't want one for a gift.

 

Voices--Paul Weeks

May 4, 1957
Los Angeles

Paul Weeks, formerly of the Mirror and The Times, says:

The Los Angeles Mirror's success was due primarily to J. Edward Murray's  journalistic talent, his creativity, his forward-looking at important issues still not properly reported, his ability to put together a staff of writers and reporters who shared his views and responded to his encouragement, his enthusiasm for his own work.

The then-decision makers in the ruling Chandler family  (before the Otis Chandler era) destroyed their own creation, abandoning the Mirror simultaneously with Hearst's ceasing publication of the Los Angeles Examiner.

 

Evening newspapers were gradually disappearing due to the rise of television. But before publishers became fully aware of that, the sparkling appearance of the Mirror rose in the Chandlers' eagerness to monopolize the market in the Los Angeles metro field. The old Los Angeles Daily News was  losing its position of the best and the brightest of newspapers with a liberal editorial bent when Manchester Boddy began to lose interest and retired to his flower gardens.

 

When The Times bought out the old Daily  News, the Mirror picked up some of us who never wanted to work for the Chandlers but  found ourselves in the hands of  the best managing  editor in the business. The Matrix prizes and the countless other awards the paper earned must be tracked directly to Ed.

 

He assigned me to explore the in-pouring black community -- its ability (or inability, more likely) to find housing, jobs and education in what was supposed to be an enlightened city. It was he who decided that Vernon McPherson and I should spend three months on Skid Row. I will never forget the day a press agent for the property owner who helped us get the story offered Vern and I $500 each if we kept the owner's name out of our story.

 

I rushed in to tell Murray about it, and he urged me with a smile to go back to work. The next day the guy came back and walked into  Murray's office. You never heard such a rumble out of him as he kicked the guy out.

 

But the Chandlers just couldn't face the "monster" they had created. If you knew of The Times in those days, you'd know they wouldn't want their rampaging little newspaper to dig up so much grist that was REALLY news. They edged out Murray and replaced his team with a couple of editors from Texas that could march to The Times' own concept of a newspaper. They enlarged the sheet from five columns to full spread. I had seldom covered politics, but when I did some advance material for the Democratic convention that picked  JFK, I got hustled off to Washington to open a one-person bureau.

 

Meantime, young Otis became publisher of The Times. The paper rose from one of the worst in the nation to among the top four -- but we all know what happened to that  when Otis left and The Times started another drop downhill.

 

 

Crazy O'Malley

Dear Walter,

What's this I hear about you looking over the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum to play baseball? You must be joking! Do you know how far it would be from home plate to the left field wall? 250 feet!

McCarthy dies

 

Part 1

Click to enlarge

Part 2, click to enlarge

 

Part 3, click to enlarge

 

Pictures from Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy's funeral here.
 

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Cop held in bribery

May 3, 1957
Santa Monica

Thomas Alfred Gates, 33, a chef at a Santa Monica restaurant, approached The Times with a story. Gates, who was charged with grand theft, said that during a recess in his preliminary hearing, Detective Curtis Frank, 45, offered to get his case reduced to a misdemeanor for $150.

The Times and district attorney's investigators gave Gates marked money and a wireless microphone. A Times photographer using a telephoto lens took pictures of the transaction as Gates handed Frank an envelope containing $80 in money marked with fluorescent powder.

Santa Monica Police Chief Otto Faulkner fired Frank, but told the detective he could ask to be reinstated if he was found not guilty.

Dist. Atty.'s Lt. Howard Hooper testified that when he took Frank to the rear of the restaurant to be searched, a packet of money fell to the ground next to Frank's feet. Times reporter Clarence Mortenson testified that Frank asked "for a break" during his arrest. Frank, meanwhile, said that he had been framed.

During the trial, Douglas Huff came forward to testify that when he was arrested for attempted burglary, Frank offered to reduce charges against him for $150. Huff said he refused to pay the money and was sentenced. Jurors also heard a recording of a conversation between Gates and Frank, a conversation that Frank said never occurred.

The Times said an "all-woman jury" found Santa Monica Police Detective Curtis Frank not guilty despite the testimony, photographs, recording and presence of fluorescent powder from the marked money. Unfortunately, we don't know the details because the story got bumped off Page 1 for the microfilmed edition, so all that remains is a photo caption of Frank, his wife and his attorney in the hallway of the courthouse.

And as of 1965, according to The Times, Frank was still with the Santa Monica Police Department. According to the Social Security Death Index, a man named Curtis Frank, born Jan. 10, 1912, and issued a Social Security card in California, died in Henderson, Nev., on Dec. 4, 1995.

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See the ad for the Rex

Matt Weinstock

May 2, 1957
Los Angeles

In the last couple of weeks Kay Cataldi has repeatedly observed a strange sight--young women walking barefooted along a street, carrying their shoes.

She saw one on Hill street, another on 1st street. The other day a girl walked into City Hall barefooted, carrying her shoes, and Kay's curiosity overwhelmed her.

And so she asks, what is this? A trend? A rite of spring? A sorority initiation? Are they members of a cult?

Well, Kay, I've made a brief survey of my own and the consensus was best expressed by a waitress named Julia:

"Are you kidding? They go barefooted because their feet hurt. As for the girl in the City Hall. I've had a yen to do that for years. Boy, that cool marble floor on a hot day, that's living!

AROUND TOWN: Kendis Rochlen, who has to stay out late covering the goings-on at nightclubs and movie colony soirees, reports the all-night disc jockeys speak a strange nocturnal language. She heard one remark, after playing a Nat Cole record: "Isn't that Nathaniel the coocooest?"

Old convict

May 2, 1957
Los Angeles

Police officers had a kindly affection for old "Toothpick Charlie." At 93, the dapper, neatly dressed man known as James J. Fitzpatrick, James Hennesy and James Flannery had been  working his cons since before they were born. Of course, in typically modest fashion, he denied everything, even his nickname. "Never heard that term Toothpick Charlie till I read it in a newspaper story," he said.

Charlie, whose record at Folsom and San Quentin prisons dated to 1904 (he denied ever being arrested, even when police showed him his voluminous file), was nice to the police. "Always been a courteous man," he said. "A policeman who picks you up when you're breaking the law, he means no imposition. You got to appreciate that. He's just doing his job. Always a good idea to be courteous."

Early in his career, Charlie specialized in burglaries and police said he was one of the best second-story men in the business. But by 84, he had switched to stealing money from pay phones by jamming them with paper napkins.

In 1954, when he got 10 days for stealing coins from pay phones, he said he was born in San Diego and had been in the service, fighting in Cuba and the Philippines during the Spanish-American War.  He said most of his family was dead. "Might be  a relative or two around  but I wouldn't care about looking 'em up.  Wouldn't want to impose," he said.

Before that, he'd been arrested in 1948 for hitting pay phones in a drugstore at 401 W. 4th St. and in 1949 for the same thing at the bus station, 6th and Los Angeles streets.

His latest arrest was at 756 S. Spring St. Police found he was carrying a few custom picks and $2.28. Judge Mark Bandler gave him a suspended sentence of 180 days and warned Charlie that if he was picked up again, he'd be sentenced for that crime plus the 180 days.

"It would be kind of nice if you mended your ways," Bandler said, "but I suppose it's too late."

According to The Times, Charlie planned to move to San Diego. "It's high time I retire," he said. And perhaps he did, for he never appears in The Times again, nor is he listed in the California death index, raising the question of exactly what became of the old con.

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No, No, No

KCBS-TV Channel 2 reports idiotically that the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department photographed the Black Dahlia crime scene, a neat trick since Elizabeth Short was killed in the city of Los Angeles. Oops! The crime scene on South Norton Avenue was actually photographed by the LAPD's Gilbert Laursen. People should at least make some attempt to do their homework.

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Jealousy slaying

May 2, 1957
Los Angeles

Meet Henry C. "Clay" Hamby, 42, who lived with his wife, Mildred, and three children in a 944-square-foot home at 14519 Paddock St., in Sylmar.

Clay is a drophammer operator at Reylon Precision Products, a little machine shop at 7145 Vineland, in North Hollywood. Mildred, who's 10 years younger, used to work there, too.

And then there's the foreman of the night shift, Harold Decker, 36, who lived in a fourplex  at 10632 El Dorado, Pacoima.

Mildred says Clay never mistreated her. But there was something about Harold. "I just met this man, and... well...," she said.

In August 1956, Mildred left Clay and the three children and either moved in with Harold or got another unit in the same fourplex.

"I was trying to find out through the trial separation if it was an infatuation or what it was--my attraction to Harold," she sobbed to detectives. "I'm torn apart inside! I'm all mixed up!"

On Sept. 13, 1956, Clay got his .270-caliber Winchester, drove to the machine shop and killed Harold with one shot to the chest. He pointed the rifle at the other workers and threatened to kill them if they moved, then said he was going to shoot his wife. He fled, but not before one of the workers threw a vise and struck him in the leg.

Someone at the shop wrote down the license number of Clay's station wagon and called police, who headed for Mildred's apartment in Sylmar in time to arrest Clay before he killed anyone else.

Held in the Van Nuys jail, Clay said: "I don't remember anything."

Clay was convicted of second-degree murder at his retrial after the first jury deadlocked.

On May 1, 1957, Clay was declared insane at the time of the shooting and transferred to the jurisdiction of Psychopathic Court, never again to appear in the pages of The Times.

Mildred and her three children are likewise lost to history.

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