Joe and Ruby had four young children, but were treating them so badly that a warrant was issued on charges of neglect.
Juvenile Officers Roy Keene and Connie Kennedy went to the home at 1328 Concord St.
Joe fought with Keene, who had managed to get one handcuff fastened.
Joe swung the loose handcuff as a weapon, beating Keene in the face.
With John, 6, Steve, 5, Robert, 3, and Judy, 3 months, nearby, Officer Keene drew his pistol and shot Joe in the stomach.
In the meantime, officers had stopped Ruby at Temple and Figueroa on
another matter and as she was being questioned, she heard the shooting reported over the police radio.
Transported to the Hollenbeck station, Ruby was told that Joe Verdin,
26, had died at General Hospital. She was arrested on the child neglect
warrant and the children were turned over to the authorities.
Unfortunately, The Times didn't pursue this story, so we don't know
what happened. According to the Social Security Death Index, a woman
named Ruby Verdin died in 2006 in Salt Lake City at the age of 83. We
can only hope for the best.
The story of Alton Clifton Poret presents unusually frustrating
challenges for the diligent researcher. Identified in a 1954 Times
story as "a former Los Angeles Negro," Poret and Edgar Labat were
sentenced to die in Louisiana's electric chair for the Nov. 12, 1950,
rape of a white New Orleans telephone operator.
Not that The Times ever said anything so indelicately precise. Indeed,
the paper never ran a word about the original trial and in later
stories merely referred to "a criminal assault charge" or a "criminal
attack of a white woman."
If it weren't for the efforts of a Westside meat dealer and bail
bondsman, The Times would have written almost nothing about the case.
The advocate was Nelson N. Soll, and he began raising money for Poret's
defense after reading a Louisiana newspaper article.
"I thought Poret's story was phony at first," Soll said in a Sept. 14,
1957, story. "Then I checked it out. I've spent four years on this
case. I have collected affidavits that prove beyond the shadow of a
doubt that Poret is innocent--that he was not even anywhere near the
scene of the crime. But he is a black man and he is sentenced to die
and only a miracle of the Lord can keep him from being strapped into
that electric chair at one minute past minute next Friday. We are
praying for that miracle."
For his troubles, Soll had a cross burned on the front lawn of his home at 1523 Crest Drive,
The Times said. Rabbi Abraham I. Maron of Congregation Mogen David
and the Rev. Leroy M. Kopp of the United Fundamentalist Church led the
local religious campaign calling for Poret to be spared.
Eventually, the Hollywood Committee for Alton Clifton Poret's Defense was formed, headed by Adolphe Menjou.
(I guess I'll have to rethink my opinion of Menjou, which was pretty
low after he praised the Japanese evacuation of Los Angeles during
World War II. To paraphrase, he said he hoped to never see another
Japanese face).
After a long and complex legal battle (the men contended that whites
were systematically excluded from juries) Poret and Labat were released
from prison in 1969, having pleaded guilty to attempted aggravated
assault. At that time, they held the record for being on America's
death row. Of their 16 years, two months and two days in prison, 14
years had been on death row.
According to the Social Security Death Index, a man named Edgar M.
Labat died in 1998 in Mississippi. Poret disappeared from the pages of
history after being convicted of attempted rape in Rochester, N.Y., in
1971.
He wrote this poem in prison:
Living at the river's edge, Never knowing when they'll drive that final wedge. Will the wheel of justice ever look my way? And when it does, what will it have to say?
Nelson N. Soll died in 1994 at the age of 84. His activism did not end
with Poret. He raised money for the defense of a boyhood friend, Jack
Ruby, despite many death threats.
I've read any number of horrible stories in the old papers, but this is
one of the worst in terms of senseless tragedy. The facts, such as they
are, don't even begin to explain what happened. But then how can anyone
explain absolute madness?
Allene Hall Durston, 58, was dying of bone cancer. Of all the people in
the world, the person she loved the most was her grandson Ronald
"Ronnie" Barrett White, who lived with his parents, Evelyn and Thomas,
and a younger sister at 6836 Sylvia Ave., Reseda.
She had been living with the family until July 24, when she kidnapped
Ronnie and left a note for her daughter, Evelyn Durston White, saying that she
was "taking the boy for my own" and "going on a long trip." Police
found Allene and her grandson in a taxi an hour later. She wasn't
charged, but her relatives told her to move out. First, she lived at 6410 Van Nuys Blvd., and then she moved to a motel on Ventura Boulevard.
Evelyn said she sent Ronnie to school at 8:45 that morning with 40 cents in his pocket. On his way to Shirley Avenue Elementary School,
Allene apparently intercepted him. One of his friends, Danny McDonald,
came by at noon to see why Ronnie hadn't been in school. A search was
begun for Ronnie and his grandmother. But by then it was too late.
Somehow, she found a vacant house at 6337 Topanga Canyon Blvd.
Allene Durston, who loved Ronnie "above every human on earth,"
according to his mother, led him to an upstairs bedroom and shot him
twice in the back.
Then she shot herself. The first one didn't do the job, so she shot
herself again. Police found a note on her body. It was a letter Ronnie
had written back in December, telling her what he wanted for Christmas.
Evelyn told police that her mother had a "suicide complex" and had been
talking for years about killing herself. Apparently no one ever took
her seriously. "I never dreamed she would do this to him," Evelyn said.
Every day, I visit a friend who is recovering from cancer surgery at Glendale Memorial Hospital, so I took a short detour and visited the boyhood home of Caryl Chessman, the "Red Light Bandit."
Photograph by Larry Harnisch / Los Angeles Times 3280 Larga Ave., Atwater Village, Calif.
Photograph by Bob Jakobsen / Los Angeles Times
Caryl Chessman, left, with Detective E.M. "Al" Goossen, Jan. 23, 1948. At the time, Chessman was living at the home on Larga and had been arrested 6th Street and Shatto Place after a high-speed chase. He was convicted on eight counts of robbery, four counts of kidnapping, two morals charges, one count of attempted robbery, one count of attempted rape and auto theft. He was sentenced to the gas chamber on two counts of kidnapping and was executed in 1960.
Goossen worked many prominent cases of the 1940s and '50s, including the gang slaying of Tony Brancato and Tony Trombino and the murder of Gladys Kern, a real estate agent who was killed while showing a home in Los Feliz. He worked as a private investigator in the San Fernando Valley after retiring from the LAPD.
Ever since returning from my vacation I've been thinking about an eerie
piece of information I picked up while driving along Highway 395 near
Big Pine.
Riding along was Sid Parratt of the Department of Water and Power
office in Independence. Sid probably knows the area better than anyone
and he pointed out places of interest and their historical backgrounds.
This is mountain country with strange formations--immense areas of
black lava rock, huge buttes which seem out of place, an occasional
green spot in an immense wasteland.
Just north of the little town of Zurich, Parratt pointed to the right
and said, "See that clump of trees way over there?" I did, far in the
distance.
A highly unusual project was being built there, he said. Last year some
uncommunicative men from Caltech had scouted the Owens River country,
he said, looking for a suitable site for some kind of laboratory. It
had to be in the wide-open spaces where the air was always clear. They
finally settled on 275 acres and leased it for 25 years from the
department.
As Parratt understood it, they were building a laboratory to detect radio signals from outer space.
However, there was fantastic speculation about the project. Imaginative
folk were saying it had something to do with tracking guided missiles.
You have to keep in mind that the people in the section see brilliant
flashes of the Nevada atomic blasts and some of them are nervous about
radioactivity and other things they don't understand.
This is to report there's nothing mysterious about the project. It is
known as a radio astronomy installation. It is headed by John G. Bolton
of Caltech and is sponsored by the Office of Naval Research.
The buildings are almost completed and work is going ahead on the
railroad tracks on which two huge antennas can be moved to capture
signals from outer space. It will be a year before the first antenna is
complete, another year before the second is in operation.
The project was inspired by the realization that astronomers have gone
about as far as they can with visual inspection of what's out there.
They hope through radio astronomy to gather additional evidence of such
things as the shape and configuration of galaxies. They know already
that gas clouds emit certain signals and sensitive equipment elsewhere
has recorded radio waves bouncing off the moon and additional
information on Jupiter.
To put it another way, the radio astronomy people do not anticipate
that they'll intercept any hot flashes from little green men on Mars.
Let's hope that if there's anybody out there, they're not checking on our misbehaving planet, either.
DURING A LULL a
pharmacist on duty at a San Fernando Valley super drugstore phoned a
bookie and placed some bets. (I know there aren't supposed to be any
bookies, but there are).
He was dictating the name of the horse he wanted in the seventh race
when the assistant sales manager excitedly dashed up to him and
exclaimed:
"What in the devil do you think you're doing? It's all over the store!"
The pharmacist had inadvertently rested his elbow on the store's
intercom switch and his bets were going out over the loud speaker.
INEVITABLY, no matter how serious the situation, the jokesters take over. Perhaps it's a good thing thus to temper a crisis with humor.
For instance, some made fellow at Disney studio keeps calling and
asking, "Have they sent the freedom balloons down through the Cotton
Curtain yet?"
If not, he says he has a message to put on them: "Peace, it's wonderful!"
And as Hugh Brundage, KMPC newscaster, came into the Naples restaurant, Pat Buttram looked up from his lunch and said, "Hi, Hugh, what's new? Have they fired on Ft. Sumter yet?"
AROUND TOWN--A
City Hall worker who likes to disconcert people in elevators with
irrelevant remarks said to Tom Mannix the other day, "I wish payday
would get here--I'm tired of eating at the Midnight Mission."
Several passengers quivered noticeably...George Fedor, pixy Vine Street
bartender, says he just rented a new house. No furniture in it, but
wall-to-wall floors.
OK, let's go get a cup of coffee and talk about our friend "The Money Man."
We can just drive up Central Avenue until we find some all-night place.
I'm not really hungry. I can never eat after being at a murder scene
anyway.
How about here? Looks like we have the place to ourselves.
There's two things I forgot to tell you about Max "The Money Man"
Shayne. The medical examiner said he'd been dead about four hours. That
would make the time of death about 11 p.m. I'll get to the other one in
a minute.
What do you think? An obvious robbery and homicide? Nothing unusual?
Maybe I'm too suspicious, but I don't like it. Not at all. We've had
half a dozen stranglings in L.A. in the last six months. All women.
Every one of them put up a terrific fight. Here you've got "The Money
Man," a big beefy guy who's been in the joint and there isn't a mark on
him. Strangled with a hankie? C'mon.
Yeah, it sure looks like robbery. He always carried a stack of $100
bills. And it looks like someone rummaged through his clothes, because
we found the address book, business cards and that insurance policy on
the floor of the car.
You want to know about the insurance policy? That's what I forgot to
tell you. He took it out Sept. 10 with a $2,295 initial premium. And
the first newspaper accounts had the amount wrong. It was for $250,000
($1.7 million USD 2006).
Here we've got a guy with a criminal record, facing a prison sentence
for fraud. He's a scam artist who takes out a big insurance policy and
less than three weeks later he's dead. And he doesn't put up a fight.The details are murky but he'd also been fooling around with a couple of other life insurance policies in the last month.
Yeah, it bothers me. But not as much as it bothers the insurance
company. You see, there's a suicide clause in that policy. If the
individual kills himself within two years, all you get back is the
premiums you've paid.
I'll take a refill, thanks.
The cops will pick up a guy named Earl Fernando Matlock, a 35-year-old
laborer. It seems he's been passing a lot of $100 bills recently. It
seems he can't explain where he got the money.
Matlock says Shayne came by his home, 10719 Weigand Ave., on the afternoon of the killing.
This is his story:
"We rode around for quite a while and I kept saying I had to go home to
take care of my children. Finally Shayne said he wanted me to rough up
a couple of fellows for him. I said I wouldn't do it.
"He talked about some trouble the government was going to make for him
but that it didn't make much difference to him because he had only six
months to live.
"He said he wanted to die and I told him to get some cyanide if he wanted to do something like that.
"Shayne said: 'No, it can't look like suicide.' "
He offered Matlock $1,000 to help him kill himself. When Matlock wouldn't do it, Shayne threatened to get him, Matlock said.
"I kept trying to get out of the parked car and he would keep pulling
me back. My shirt got torn and he scratched my face when we were
struggling.
"So I pulled the strap from the back seat around Shayne's neck but
released it when he slid down into the seat to avoid being seen by a
passing car.
" 'Why don't you go ahead and finish it?' Shayne asked.
"I thought then that I'd better do something so I pulled the strap
tight again, intending to just make him unconscious so I could leave.
When he went limp, I wiped my fingerprints off the car and left."
He says that while they were struggling, Shayne shoved the billfold and some jewelry in his pockets.
Matlock was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to the gas
chamber. The only problem is that the judge barred any testimony about
Shayne's insurance policy and the suicide clause, so the case was
appealed. He was retried and sentenced to life in prison.
In 1960, Molly Shayne sued Beneficial Standard Insurance for payment of
the policy and the company countersued, saying that the death was a
fraud. She finally got a settlement in "five figures," according to The
Times.
Matlock died in 1964 in Marin County. He was 42.
Time to go. It's nearly sunrise and the breakfast crowd will be coming
in. We should leave a good tip, we've been here a long time.
In 1969, The Times sent one of its best and most respected writers, Art
Seidenbaum, on a tour of California college campuses: UCLA, USC,
Stanford, UC Berkeley and someplace called San Fernando Valley State.
The resulting series for West magazine was later published in
Seidenbaum's book "Confrontation on Campus."
So in honor of all those who are taking their kids back to campus for
the fall, here's the final part of Seidenbaum's "The Troubles With Students" in
which he visits UC Berkeley and discusses the "Majorca or fight" syndrome: "If we don't bring down the university this year, then I'm going to Majorca and paint.... If we haven't radicalized this campus by the end of the quarter, then I'll accept the goddam fellowship at Cambridge." The dress code is Army
fatigues and beards for the men; serapes and tights for the women. And
lots of revolutionary self-righteousness. Don't worry, man. It's cool.
We're all pass/fail here. (Hey, isn't that Larry Magid?)
It's almost 3 a.m. and we're parked on 134th Street between Water Way
and Central Avenue in Compton. In two years, there will be houses all
along the north side of the street. It's hard to make out in the dark,
but that's a big, orange Cadillac in front of us. Our victim is in
there. Ready? Let's take a look. Keep your hands in your pockets and
don't move anything.
That's him behind the wheel. Max "The
Money Man" Shayne, 43. He's heavyset, bald and wears glasses. Strangled
with a man's linen handkerchief, otherwise there's not a mark on him.
There's the cutoff end of a woman's silk stocking near the body.
Pockets are turned inside-out and papers, business cards and an address
book are on the floor of the car. He usually carries a stack of $100
bills, but his wallet is missing. He's got 20 cents on him. According
to these business papers, he has a piece of two Anaheim cafes and
carries $175,000 in life insurance.
Kind of a shady customer. Shayne was arrested in Berwyn, Ill., in 1937
for receiving stolen property and sentenced to a year in prison. He and
his brother Irving are out on bail while they appeal a conviction for
defrauding the Federal Housing Administration. Prosecutors said the
Shaynes used the Money Man agency to arrange home improvement loans
that were used to pay off bills instead.
His widow, Molly, says she wasn't aware of any threats and said he
hadn't been worried about anything recently. Got a son named Sherwin
and a daughter named Sheila.
We better get moving. Officers A.E. Wise and R.L. Brown of the Compton
Police Department are making their rounds and they'll be here soon.
Nothing more to see here, anyway.
As a child of the 1950s, it's a treat for me to see the old comics, with the large panels and fine draftsmanship. Some don't hold up terribly well but others remain classics, like "Li'l Abner," which has been featuring a bald female spy named "Jewel Brynner."
You asked for Brenda Starr, here she is, from Sept. 29, 1957:
And Al Capp's parody of Milton Caniff's "Steve Canyon":
The correct answer is Caryl Whittier Chessman. A very impressive showing by Duane Laible. I didn't expect anyone to guess so quickly.
Meet the boy bandit gang, which terrorized Los Angeles with a string of robberies and shootings in early 1941. The gang formed while the young men were assigned to county road camps for stealing cars.
Los Angeles Times photo
From left, William Taylor, Caryl Chessman, Robert Tollack, Andrew Rutledge and Donald Abbott, Feb. 7, 1941.
"[William] Taylor and I were in Road Camp No. 7 in Las Flores Canyon," Chessman said. "Auto stealing. You pick up ideas there. We did. And here we are."
Gordon Klee, who was later eliminated as a suspect, said: "The rest of us were in Camp No. 1 in Soldedad Canyon. Same rap. I've known Chessman all my life. We went to school together. So when we got out last autumn, we just naturally drifted together."
Before they were arrested, the gang stole cars and robbed service stations and liquor stores across Los Angeles. Several gang members, sitting in a stolen car in Flintridge, got the drop on a pair of sheriff's deputies who stopped to question them, and stole their patrol car.
A Times reporter asked why they committed the robberies.
Our famous mystery guest is one of the young men in this photo. He wrote a number of books that were translated into many languages. The other four men, as far as I can determine, are forgotten.
Sept. 30, 1957
SUBJECT'S NAME--Judy Smith or Judy Burris
SUBJECT'S DESCRIPTION--Age 30. Height, 5 feet, 5 inches. Weight, 125 pounds. Dark brown eyes. Light brown hair. Slight scar on left side of jaw.
Any person with information as to subject's whereabouts is requested to contact her mother, Mrs. Dessie Fentiman, 15138 Banderia Ave.,* Paramount, Phone: MEtcalf 3-6611.
It was midafternoon and sticky warm and I stopped in a dull and empty cafe to make a phone call.
The booth was across from the soda counter--about 10 feet from the
jukebox, which was silent. As I stepped into the cubicle the waitress
looked at me and gave a shrug of her shoulder, significant of I don't
know what.
I closed the door and dialed.
A woman answered.
"Hello," she said, slowly.
"Mrs. Fentiman?" I asked.
She said yes, it was. Speaking. I explained that I had received her letter. "About your missing daughter."
"Oh yes," she said. The words came slowly, in monotone.
Then our question-and-answer session began. She told me that it had been more than seven years.
"August of 19 and 50," she said. She explained that her daughter had lived with her in Hot Springs, Ark., until the age of 18.
"Then she married and came to California," she said. "Lived in Oakland
and Grass Valley. That's where she separated from her husband--Grass
Valley. Then she came to Long Beach."
(A couple of times, I glanced at the lone waitress. She was staring at me, disinterestedly. Like there was nothing to stare at).
Mrs. Fentiman continued to answer my questions.
"She wasn't much of a hand to write," she told me, "so I was about the only one who heard from her.
"She'd done waitress work and done beauty operator. Liked to dance a lot."
(The waitress, maybe 25, walked toward the jukebox).
"A son of mine," Mrs. Fentiman continued, "saw her in San Pedro not
long before she stopped writing. She told him she was going to marry
this boy Johnnie and go to Alaska."
I asked her if she knew Johnnie.
"No," she answered. "Judy wrote me about him, though. She worked
keeping house for his parents in Long Beach. A very nice boy, she
always said." Her voice came sadder, now.
(The waitress was walking away from the jukebox. Voices and music
jumped out after her. In rock 'n' roll beat they cried: "Gonna find
her... Gonna find her...")
"I never did know," Mrs. Fentiman continued, "what Johnnie's last name was.
"If I just only knew their names."
(The music was loud--too loud. "I've been searchin'... I've been searchin' ev'ry which way...")
"Mrs. Fentiman," I asked, talking over the music, "what did your daughter's last letter say?"
"That she was coming to see me. In two weeks. Finally a couple years later, I came out here.
"Police been looking, but we can't find a trace."
(The beat of the song was building. "And if she's hiding up on
blueberry hill... Am I gonna find her, child... You know I will...")
"I can't believe she's living or she'd write me," Mrs. Fentiman sighed.
"I hate to feel that way but I can't help it."
(The record was finishing up. "No matter where she's hiding... She's
gonna hear me coming... I'm gonna walk right down that street... Like
Bulldog Drummond...")
I told Mrs. Fentiman that I'd see what I could do and I hung up. I stepped up from the phone booth and nodded to the waitress.
She nodded back. "The Coasters," she said.
I smiled, wondering what she was talking about.
"The Coasters," she replied, motioning toward the jukebox. "Really rock, don't they?"
ps. Dessie L. Fentiman died July 25, 1976, in Shasta County, according to California death records. She was 71.
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.
Blogs
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.