Voices -- Christine Collins, November 12, 1930

From the California State Archives

The Christine Collins letters The woman whose tragedy inspired the Clint Eastwood movie "Changeling" tells her story in her own words. Los Angeles, Cal. November 12, 1930 Mr. Chas. L. Neumiller President Board of Prison Directors Reprisa, California Dear Sir: In regard to the case of Walter J. Collins now before you for parole may I be permitted a few words? I have never known Mr. Collins personally and his prison record must speak for him, but I have been daily in personal contact with his wife, Christine Collins, for about a year and a half. She has lived in my home during that time. It is for her sake I am asking your leniency for Mr. Collins. You have undoubtedly heard of the terrible strain she has been under during the past two years and over and I want to testify as to her condition physically, mentally and financially. The mental strain she has been under has been greater than the ordinary woman could bear without breaking mentally, yet she has borne up, even triumphed over it all. Physically, she is a nervous wreck. Unable to hold any position no matter how capable she might be mentally to hold it. Often unable to leave her bed for two or three days at a time on account of acute nervous headaches. Her only means of support has been cut off too. A sister who has been contributing to her support is now unable to carry on due to her own ill health. Without her husband the future looks very dark to Mrs. Collins. So, can you not find it in your heart to grant to this man a chance to make good to this little woman who has stood so loyally by her husband through his trouble and also undergone the loss of their only child under such tragic circumstances? If he had been convicted of manslaughter he would now have paid his debt to society. Surely he has more than paid for the thing for which he was convicted. Will you not remember the words of our Master, who said: "As ye would that men should do unto you, do you even so to them." Yours very respectfully, Mrs. James C. Borton 2614 N. Griffin Ave. Los Angeles, Cal.

Robbery suspect kills LAPD officer, 1958

Photograph by Larry Harnisch / Los Angeles Times The grave of Sgt. Gene T. Nash, Rose Hills Memorial Park.

Note: This updates a post from November. Photograph by Larry Harnisch / Los Angeles Times On the night of Oct. 20, 1958, four police officers went to 2723 S. Budlong Ave. in search of suspects in a series of 60 holdups  Police Sgt. Gene T. Nash died in 1958 after a shootout with robbery suspects at an apartment house on Budlong just south of Adams. The killer was convicted and sentenced to prison, and in a televised ceremony, Police Chief William H. Parker presented his widow, Cynthia, with her husband’s Medal of Valor. But that’s only the beginning of a complex story that was mostly ignored by the newspapers — even though it went to the U.S. Supreme Court — and exists in conflicting accounts on dim microfilm in the basement of the Hall of Records and in material at the California State Archives. LAPD photograph Police Sgt. Gene T. Nash About 8:30 p.m. on Oct. 20, 1958, Nash, 32, and Sgt. Walter F. Bitterolf of the Robbery Division, accompanied by Sgt. Sheril O. “Sam” Eastenson and Officer Charles E. Leonard, went to the two-story apartment house at 2723 S. Budlong Ave., slightly northwest of USC. The officers had a warrant for suspected robber Bennie Will Meyes, 33, a parole violator and longtime criminal with an eighth-grade education who had a job cleaning out garbage trucks, and they were looking for William Douglas, Meyes’ alleged partner in about 60 holdups. Meyes and Douglas had “a penchant for striking at card and dice games, but they do not ignore business establishments, markets, theaters and even street jobs,” according to a probation report. Several victims had been shot or pistol-whipped, according to prison records. Eastenson and Leonard waited outside in case the men tried to escape while Nash and Bitterolf went in with their guns drawn. Bitterolf knocked at Apartment No. 2 and a man named Virgil Lee, 24, answered the door. Both investigators showed their badges. Bitterolf said they were police officers and asked for “Bill.” Lee said there was no one there named “Bill,” so Bitterolf pushed his way into the apartment, explaining that they wanted to look around. The officers found another man and two women watching TV in the living room. One woman said: “There is absolutely no one in this apartment except my baby, lying on Pappy’s bed there in the front bedroom.” Bitterolf turned off the TV to question the four people and after about five minutes, Nash left to explore the rest of the apartment. There was a hallway with doors that led to the back bedroom used by Douglas, the front bedroom where the young boy was sleeping, and the central bathroom that connected both bedrooms. According to Meyes’ account, when the police arrived, he and Douglas had been talking in the bathroom. Meyes had violated his parole by leaving Indio, Calif., without permission and Douglas gave him a gun to pawn so he could afford a lawyer to straighten things out. Meyes had taken the loaded .38 revolver from under Douglas’ mattress and stuck it in his waistband beneath his shirt.  “While we were talking, the apartment suddenly went quiet,” Meyes said in court documents. “There was no sound coming from the living room or the television set. Then in that areaway of the hall we could not see, footsteps, along with this strange silence, started back where we were.... Douglas and I bolted through a darkened bedroom. Douglas got on the floor on his stomach alongside the bed with his head facing the window and I stood alongside a chest near the door.” Nash, his gun drawn, tried the door to the front bedroom, but it was locked. He went through the bathroom and into the front bedroom. Bitterolf heard eight to 10 shots and ran down the hallway. He found his partner lying on the bedroom floor, still holding his gun. Nash had taken several bullets in the abdomen, including one that went through his spleen and virtually cut one of his kidneys in two. “How is it, Gene?” Bitterolf asked. “Real bad,” Nash answered. “There were two of them. The one that shot me went out the window, the other one is in the closet.” Having heard the gunshots as he waited outside, Eastenson ran into the apartment and kicked down the bedroom door. Bitterolf told him to go back outside and radio for an ambulance. Bitterolf found Douglas in the closet, so badly wounded that Bitterolf thought he was dead. According to court documents, the sleeping boy wasn’t injured, although Bitterolf thought he had been killed because of the blood on the bed. Bitterolf went back to the living room, searched the men for weapons and made them sit on the floor, then returned to encourage Nash. “Take it easy, the ambulance is on the way, you will be all right,” Bitterolf said. “Don’t kid me,” Nash replied. “I know I am done for. I know I am going to die.” As a Herald-Express photographer took pictures, doctors at Central Receiving Hospital worked to save Nash. His wife, Cynthia, rushed to the hospital, but arrived minutes after he died, The Times said. Back on Budlong, Eastenson saw the blood that Meyes left when he jumped out the window. The officer followed the trail over a fence and across adjoining property, finally finding Meyes on the floor of a car, shot in the thigh and right hand. On the ambulance ride to the hospital, Meyes was questioned by Sgt. Leonard Rafferty. And at this crucial point of the story, it becomes impossible to reconcile the conflicting court documents. In one version, Meyes implicated Douglas, apparently assuming that Nash had killed him. In another account, Meyes said he didn’t know Nash was a police officer and that Nash fired first. One account says Douglas was badly wounded and lost a large amount of blood. He was purportedly given powerful painkillers and Rafferty allegedly kept tapping him on the forehead so he wouldn’t fall asleep as he gave his statement to a police stenographer. Another account implies Douglas was fully conscious and says he and Meyes, both in wheelchairs, were brought together and that Douglas implicated Meyes. “You are going to fry, Bennie,” Douglas supposedly said, “and you are not going to take me with you. Tell them the truth; tell them you pulled the trigger.” The case was presented to the Los Angeles County Grand Jury and Meyes and Douglas were indicted on charges of murder. Hundreds of officers attended Nash’s funeral and he was buried at Rose Hills Memorial Park. In addition to his wife, Nash was survived by a 2-year-old daughter. On Nov. 27, 1958, his widow was presented with his Medal of Valor. Then the news reports stopped. The Times never wrote a word about any of the trials in the killing. And now the story becomes even more complex. According to court documents, the first prosecution of Meyes and Douglas ended in a mistrial in March 1959. On June 23, 1959, Meyes was convicted of second-degree murder and found to be a habitual criminal, receiving a life sentence. (In one of the typical conflicting accounts in the case, the Superior Court file says Douglas was found not guilty and the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1963 ruling says he was convicted and sentenced to five years to life). According to the federal high court’s ruling, Meyes and Douglas were given a public defender. But at the opening of the Superior Court trial, the lawyer asked for a continuance, saying that he hadn’t time to prepare the case. It was complicated, he had too many other cases, and Meyes and Douglas wanted separate attorneys, he said. Meyes and Douglas fired their attorney because he was unprepared, asked for a continuance and filed a request for separate defense lawyers. Those motions were denied and the men were convicted. They first appealed to the California courts, and because they had no money, asked for a court-appointed lawyer. The state Court of Appeal upheld their convictions without appointing an attorney for them, saying that “no good whatever could be served by appointment of counsel.” The California Supreme Court denied their petitions for a review without giving them a hearing. On March 18, 1963, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered a state appellate court hearing for the men, who were represented by future “palimony” lawyer Marvin M. Mitchelson and Burton Marks. Two other lawyers on the men’s legal team, Fred Okrand and A.L. Wirin, often worked with the ACLU, although it’s not clear if this was an ACLU case. Justice William O. Douglas wrote for the majority: “Where the merits of the one and only appeal an indigent has as of right are decided without benefit of counsel in a state criminal case, there has been a discrimination between the rich and the poor which violates the 14th Amendment.” On June 20, 1964, The Times reported that Meyes and Douglas had been granted new trials. The Times never followed up on whether the men were retried, although prison records show that Douglas and Meyes were discharged in August 1964. For reasons that are unclear, Meyes returned to prison in 1965 and in 1967 was trying to get his conviction overturned by charging that he and Douglas were given “truth serum” before making their statements to police. Meyes was permanently discharged on July 1, 1978, by the California Department of Corrections, which has no further record of him. If he is alive today he would be 83. One of the lingering mysteries of the case is why none of the major Los Angeles papers covered the trials. The shooting and Medal of Valor ceremony were widely reported and The Times and other papers published photos of Nash, but curiously, none of them used pictures of Meyes or Douglas. In fact, only the California Eagle, a weekly serving the African American community, published Meyes’ photo, showing that he was black (as was Douglas, according to prison records). And in the days of segregated news, the major Los Angeles papers simply didn’t cover such stories — even if they involved the death of a police officer. Postscript: Eastenson died in 1994, Bitterolf in 2001 and Leonard in 2005.

Found on EBay -- Bullock's Wilshire

Here's an interesting number (check out the zebra stripes!) from the Collegienne department of Bullock's Wilshire. Listed on EBay starting at $275.

           

Voices -- Christine Collins, November 10, 1930

From the California State Archives

The Christine Collins letters The woman whose tragedy inspired the Clint Eastwood movie "Changeling" tells her story in her own words. 2614 N. Griffin Ave. Los Angeles, Cal. Nov. 10, 1930 Mr. Charles L. Neumiller Pres. State Prison Board % Mr. Myron Clark, State Clerk Reprisa, Cal. Dear Mr. Neumiller, I have been informed that the case of Walter J. Collins, who is at Reprisa, comes up before the Prison Board next month and as a sister of Mrs. Collins will you permit me to present my personal knowledge of the circumstances upon which the application for parole is based, which I sincerely request and hope will be brought to the attention of the board for consideration. It is not necessary to go into detail about the hardships inflicted upon Mrs. Collins since the disappearance of the child of Mr. and Mrs. Collins, as the case has been given wide publicity, but the mental anguish and consequent loss of health has rendered Mrs. Collins absolutely unable to seek employment and the support of her husband is urgently needed. I assisted her financially for a period but was forced to resign from my position, my only source of income, on account of my own ill health and for the past nine months have been unable to render any further assistance in this direction. This appeal as presented is not intended, and I trust will not be construed, to be upon the personal sympathies of those empowered to adjudge but as a statement of fact as it is felt that the granting of a parole to Mr. Collins is warranted and justified under these special circumstances. Whatever can be done for Mr. Collins in this regard will be gratefully appreciated. Yours very truly, Aimee G. Dunne

Bookie shot to death in Hollywood, December 1938

The murder scene, 6057 Selma Ave. View Larger Map Above, the Selma Avenue neighborhood today.

By the end of 1938, Weldon sensed that he was a marked man and that death was not far off. He could have stayed out of Los Angeles and maybe he would have lived--at least for a while. But he evidently decided to face whoever it was that killed him in what The Times called the "perfect murder case" -- a case that was never solved.  Earlier that year, Weldon divided his extensive Los Angeles gambling operations with his four partners and used his share of the money to invest in Inland Empire real estate and buy the Morongo Valley Lodge near Palm Springs. The IRS soon brought a tax lien on his earnings for 1936 and by that summer, he resumed bookmaking operations. On Aug. 10, 1938, he and three other men were arrested at 7404 Santa Monica Blvd. Under extensive questioning by the district attorney's office, Weldon freely discussed illicit gambling in Southern California, The Times said. As operator of the lodge, Weldon had covered the walls of the dining room with bits of his poetry and on Dec. 26, 1938, the day before he was killed, he left one final verse: "I have placed life's greatest bet and lost; Far from the Great White Way, The wheel of fortune coppers the bet And the carrion wait for their prey." Two days later, a landlady checked an expensive car (possibly a new LaSalle) that had been parked overnight at her apartment house at 6057 Selma Ave. in Hollywood. She found Weldon slumped on the floor, concealed by an overcoat the killers had tossed on the body. Weldon L. "Ducky" Irvin, 55, alias George W. Rogers and H.W. Currier, had taken two slugs from a .38 semiautomatic in the back of the head; one in his neck and the other under the left ear. One bullet evidently went out a rear side window and the other penetrated the back seat.  A .45 magazine with six rounds was found on the floor, along with the brass from two .38 rounds. The Times later alluded to evidence that he was killed by two men, one of whom accidentally shot himself in the leg. Investigators examining the car found a new leather suitcase containing letters, documents and Weldon's .38 revolver, and a cardboard carton in the trunk crammed with his clothing. Weldon's murder was a typical mob killing and although homicide detectives never solved the case despite years of investigation, they discovered half a dozen good reasons that someone might have wanted to kill him. Maybe he was murdered because he informed on his gambling rivals. Maybe it was because he got back into bookmaking after quitting the business. Maybe he was selling phony police protection against arrests. Maybe it was over gambling debts. Or maybe he was robbed. As usual in such cases, many witnesses left town "on business" while a long list of underworld suspects had air-tight alibis. A police commissioner even charged that two high-ranking LAPD officials had taken bribes to protect the killers, but he refused to testify before the grand jury and nothing ever came of his allegations. Testimony at the inquest painted this portrait of the last day of Weldon's life: On Dec. 28, 1938, Weldon and his secretary, Edna Cook, left Morongo Valley Lodge for Los Angeles. He told Cook that he was being hounded by two men, whom he called "coppers."  That morning, he told a friend that he hated to return to Los Angeles because "my life isn't worth a nickel there." "Then why don't you stay here?" the friend asked. "Well I've got to face it some time, so I might as well do it now," Weldon said. Cook said: "I let him out downtown and drove the car to El Segundo to visit my mother. He told me to meet him at 8 o'clock at a bowling alley at Pico and La Cienega boulevards (possibly the Pico Palace Bowling Center at 6081 W. Pico Blvd.). "When I got there he told me to sit down in a booth with him because he was waiting for a telephone call. He said he had told some friends they could call him there. Irvin was called to the telephone almost immediately. A couple minutes later he hurried out of the booth and drove quite fast to Sunset Boulevard and Western Avenue, where he let me out after remarking he was going to meet 'a couple of friends.' He said he would pick me up in a few minutes." But he never returned. After waiting two hours in a drugstore at Sunset and Western, Cook called Nathan Burke, a friend who took her to her apartment at 115 S. Kenmore Ave. She spent the next day asking around Hollywood about him and learned he had been killed. One of Weldon's former partners, David "Bad Boy" Klegman, an assistant director at Columbia, told police that on the night of the killing he was working at the studio and later went to a cafe. "Irvin's murder was a surprise to me," Klegman said. "I saw him three months ago at the City Hall. For three years we were business partners in the bookie business and then I split with him because he drank so much. But we never had a personal beef. I have an air-tight alibi for that night." Then Police Commissioner Raymond L. Haight dropped a bombshell, charging that Weldon's killers had bribed two high-ranking police officials to avoid arrest. Haight was called before the grand jury, but refused to testify, saying that the inquiry was an attempt to block the commission's investigation. He said the two officials who received the bribes were among the 23 officers who were forced out in Mayor Fletcher Bowron's reform of the department, but he refused to identify them and nothing ever came of his allegations.    In the summer of 1939, after months of surveillance, police raided an apartment in Santa Monica and arrested five people in the killing, all of whom were quietly released. What appeared to be the next break came in early 1940, when an unidentified movie director told investigators that he had paid $11,000 ($161,007.96 USD 2007) to Weldon shortly before the killing. Deputy Police Chief Homer Cross said: "Irvin, a well-known bookmaker, was unquestionably shot because he refused to divide up the $11,000 with four men who considered themselves partners in his bookmaking business." Klegman was arrested in the murder, then released. Police made one final, unsuccessful attempt to solve the killing in 1941 before abandoning the investigation of what remains the "perfect murder case."

Voices -- Freddie Hubbard, 1938 - 2008

	Freddie Hubbard tells Leonard Feather: "I've worked very hard to get as far as I have. I think the turning point came when I toured in Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers in the early '60s. Art spotlighted all his soloists, gave us a chance to talk on the mike, and let us compose for the band. I learned there and then that I wanted to be a leader."

Found on EBay -- Culver City Speedway

A program has been listed on EBay for the 1925 auto races, when driver Frank Elliott set a world record of 127.87 mph.

Voices -- Christine Collins, November 10, 1930

 

The Christine Collins letters The woman whose tragedy inspired the Clint Eastwood movie "Changeling" tells her story in her own words.

Fierce fighting in Cuba, near riot as Colts win over Giants, December 29, 1958

Creswell, Ore., farmer Harry Holt helps bring 107 Eurasian children from South Korean for adoption in the United States.

Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 (missing) Part 7 Part 8 The Colts defeated the New York Giants to win the NFL championship in what some people called the greatest game of all time. But the top story in The Times' sports section that morning was about crowds at Los Angeles sports events. I'm sure it was a big deal at the time, how successful 1958 had been for all sports in L.A. Successful as in how many people showed up. Sports editor Paul Zimmerman broke down the top sports and crowds. Horse racing was the top-drawing sport, with 4,608,919 people attending events over 263 days. Baseball was second in town, thanks to the new kids from Brooklyn. According to Zimmerman, the Dodgers drew 1,845,556 to the Coliseum. About 816,000 more fans attended games for free or with discount tickets. The numbers also show how sports in L.A. have changed. Football ranked third, thanks in large part to the Rams, followed by motor racing and boxing. As for the NFL game, The Times covered it all including what read like a riot in Baltimore: "An unruly mob of victory-frenzied fans made a shambles of a welcome home celebration for the Baltimore Colts tonight and caused a near panic on a jammed runway of Friendship International Airport." --Keith Thursby

Found on EBay -- Williams and Walker

Sheet music of "I May Be Crazy but I Ain't No Fool," by Alex Rogers, sung by Bert Williams. Listed on EBay starting at $25.