Aaron baseball sold

Nov. 29, 1957

Adjusted for inflation, this baseball went for $7,165.28 in 2006 dollars.

 

I can hear every memorabilia collector in America screaming.

Photo shoot

Here's how news editors (now they're called "page designers") used to crop feature pictures down to a one-column mug.

The original portrait. Here's hoping the poor AP photographer never saw how it got butchered. 

 

First, rotate the picture so the person's head is "straight."

 

Now cut it down to one column and paint out the background.

 

Voila!  A Nancy Valentine mug shot. Newspaper design as it was practiced in 1950. (And no, The Times doesn't do this anymore. Thank heavens).

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Woman kills robber

 

Nov. 28, 1957
Los Angeles

The last bad decision in James B. Burton's 42 years of bad decisions was to light a cigarette.

Because to light the cigarette, he had to put down his gun. 

Of course he had been drinking, which is not necessarily a bad decision, but it is a poor choice if you've taken a woman and her teenage daughter hostage and are threatening to kill them as you wait for the husband to get home so you can rob him.

Maybe Burton didn't think he needed to worry because Zenobia Maddox, 32,  and her daughter Tony, 15, were tied up. And because his partner was outside the home at 4715 S. Gramercy Place waiting to ambush Thomas Maddox, a real estate agent.

James Bedford Burton was an old, seasoned criminal who had served time in Kentucky, Nevada, Utah and California and had a record going back to 1935. He and his partner forced their way into the Maddox home by trying to collect on what they said was a bad check.

The men tied up the two women and while his partner waited outside, Burton ransacked the home, threatening to kill the family if they didn't find any money. As he rummaged through the house, he drank from a liquor bottle and continued threatening the Maddoxes.

In the meantime, Zenobia managed to work free of her restraints and when Burton put down the gun to light a cigarette, she grabbed the pistol.

Burton told her that the gun wasn't loaded, but she proved him wrong--five times.

Then she got a lamp and beat him with it.

Then she got another lamp and beat him with it.

Then she got a third lamp and beat him with it.

After being shot five times and beaten with three different lamps, James Bedford Burton was not feeling too well. In fact, he was pretty much dead. And his partner was long gone, having run off when he heard the gunshots.

Zenobia A. Maddox died May 6, 2002, according to the Social Security Death Index. Nice work, ma'am.

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Nov. 28, 1957

 

   

In memoriam

Nov. 25, 1957
Los Angeles

The Daily Mirror is in mourning.

 

 

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Kennedys have girl

Nov. 27, 1957

Rampages revisited

 

Photograph by Larry Harnisch / Los Angeles Times
Here's 307 Tamarac Drive, where Harvey F. Rawlings killed his family and committed suicide.

 

And this is 555 Avenue 64, where Harold Oilar killed his family in 1954.

 

And here's the home as it appears today

 

Photograph by Larry Harnisch / Los Angeles Times

How terribly tragic and utterly needless. Whatever problems these men had, surely there was nothing so great or so permanent that could explain or justify their actions.   

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Murder-suicide

Nov. 27, 1957
Los Angeles

Everybody says the Rawlings family are fine people. They have a big house at 307 Tamarac Drive in San Rafael, one of the finer neighborhoods in Pasadena.

Nice house, isn't it? Four bedrooms, two baths, 2,300 square feet by the arroyo. Maybe you'd figure whoever lived here was happy. That's what the neighbors thought about Harvey Francis Rawlings Jr. They were wrong.

It's about 5 a.m. and still dark outside. This is a bloody, nasty crime scene that involves a couple of kids. If you don't want to go in, that's fine with me.

OK, keep your hands in your pockets and don't touch anything.

Quite a place, isn't it? The whole house is wired for the hi-fi system.

Harvey is a 43-year-old attorney with a legal practice in Pasadena. Has an office on East Green Street. Except for a round of golf now and then, Harvey's life is his job.

His wife is named Marjorie Ruth but she goes by Ruth. She's 43, a UCLA graduate, sorority girl--Gamma Phi Beta--and keeps busy with women's clubs like the Lawyers Wives of Pasadena.

They have two boys. The older one is Robert. He's 16. The younger one is Raymond. He's 12. For a while they thought Raymond was mentally disabled, but it looks like he was just partially deaf and the doctors have been treating him for it.

Nice home, good family. You'd think Harvey would be grateful a few days before Thanksgiving. But underneath whatever looked like success, his life was a mess. He was worried about Raymond and deep in debt from some bad investments.

This is him, lying in the bathroom with a bullet between the eyes.

Let's keep going.

This is Ruth, lying in the hallway. From the way it looks, Harvey attacked her first by beating her in the head with a brass ball peen hammer. Then he went into Raymond's room and shot him as he was sleeping.

Looks like the gunshot woke up Robert because he's lying next to his bed. Police will figure that Harvey shot him as he was getting up.

Ruth wasn't dead though. You can see her trail of blood where she went into Raymond's room and bent over him. Then she came out here to the hallway and Harvey shot her twice in the head.

These are their cats, Charcoal and Cinder. One of the neighbors heard screams and shots but "didn't want to interfere." He'll get home from work tonight and wonder why the Rawlings home is so quiet except for the cats yowling because they are hungry. He'll get a ladder and look in one of the windows.Then he'll call the police. 

We don't know exactly what made Harvey go crazy. Before he killed everybody, he called a doctor and said he was under enormous strain. The doctor wanted him to come over to the office right away, but Harvey refused. Other attorneys say Harvey was having a hard time but seemed to be "over the hump."

Nice folks, the Rawlings family. The neighbors say they are "wonderful people."

Some will say this reminds them of the Harold Oilar case. That was the Alhambra rug dealer back in 1954 who slaughtered his family with a hatchet a few hours after having friends over to sing Christmas carols.  There was a little girl, one of his daughter's friends, sleeping over and he made her go out on the porch before he finished everyone off. Less than a mile from here at 555 Avenue 64.

He didn't manage to kill himself, though. They found him hanged with some towels on death row in San Quentin.

Ready? Let's get out of here.

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Nov. 27, 1957

 

Caryl Chessman

Nov. 26, 1957
Los Angeles

Here's an update on two stories we have been following....

After 98 witnesses and eight weeks of testimony, the prosecution is about to rest in the murder trial of L. Ewing Scott.

Throughout the trial, the defense raised objections that there was no evidence Evelyn Throsby Scott was dead because no body had been produced. However, the motions were always overruled by Judge Clement D. Nye.*

Meanwhile, Caryl Chessman is getting a new defense attorney and awaiting a decision on whether the manuscript of a proposed book, "The Kid Was a Killer," will be returned to him.  The manuscript was seized in 1954 by Harley O. Teets, the late warden of San Quentin.

Photograph by Dan McCormack / Los Angeles Times
Deputy Atty. Gen. William Bennett, left, watches as San Quentin Warden Fred Dickson displays the manuscript of Caryl Chessman's "The Kid Was a Killer," which was seized on the belief that it was "prison labor." Chessman is flanked by attorneys A.L. Wirin, left, of the American Civil Liberties Union, and Paul N. Posner.  The man in the background leaning on a counter is Dist. Atty. William R. McKesson.

Photograph by Bruce H. Cox / Los Angeles Times Chessman finally received the manuscript, a novel about a boxer, in December 1957, from Lt. L.T. O'Brien of San Quentin.  It was published in 1960.

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*Judge Clement "D. Nye." Only in L.A.