A Kinder, Simpler Time Dept.

$10 would be $228.08 in 2007 dollars.

The 'Further Crimes' of Dr. George Hodel

Above: James Ellroy's inscribed copy of "Black Dahlia Avenger," as sold on EBay.

Steve Hodel's long-promised sequel to "Black Dahlia Avenger" is evidently headed toward bookstores, according to this item in Library Journal: Steve Hodel with Ralph Pezzullo. Most Evil: The Further Serial Murders of Dr. George Hodel. Dutton. Sept. 2009. 384p. ISBN 978-0-525-95132-2. $26.95. The book is embargoed (as was "Dahlia Avenger"), but based on what has been known for years, it will probably link Dr. George Hodel to the Suzanne Degnan case -- and an overflowing file cabinet of unsolved and totally unrelated killings. One thing we know for sure is that Deborah Perez beat Hodel to the claim that her father was Zodiac. And if the "research" is anything like what was presented in "Dahlia Avenger," it will be full of holes and loaded with fanciful speculation.   Pezzullo's website is here.

Jockey Hospitalized in Track Accident; Profile of Dodger Broadcaster, May 1, 1969

Ross Newhan filed an interesting game story involving current Dodger broadcaster Rick Monday. The Oakland A's beat the Angels, 9-4, with Monday's grand slam off George Brunet the key blow. Newhan told how Monday was offered lucrative signing bonuses from several teams coming out of Santa Monica High in 1963 and "the Dodgers said they would match anything else I was offered," Monday said. His mother wanted him to go to college, however, so he attended Arizona State and eventually became the first player picked in the first free-agent draft with a $104,000 bonus from the A's. Monday credited one of his Oakland coaches, Joe DiMaggio, for his quick transition to the majors. Yes, the Joe DiMaggio. "Every day I talk to DiMaggio about a different aspect of the game," Monday said. "He has stressed the importance of mental attitude ... the importance of going to the plate with an idea of what to expect." --Keith Thursby

Movie Star Mystery Photo

Los Angeles Times file photo Update: This is George Dolenz, the father of "Monkees" star Micky Dolenz, in a publicity photo for "Vendetta." Just a reminder on how this works: I post the mystery photo on Monday and reveal the answer on Friday. To keep the mystery photo from getting lost in the other entries, I move it from Monday to Tuesday to Wednesday, etc., adding a photo every day. I have to approve all comments, so if your guess is posted immediately, that means you're wrong. (And if a wrong guess has already been submitted by someone else, there's no point in submitting it again.) If you're right, you will have to wait until Friday. There's no need to submit your guess five times. Once is enough. The only prize is bragging rights.  The answer to last week's photo: Norma Crane. Los Angeles Times file photo Update: Dolenz in "Vendetta." Here's another photo of our mystery fellow. Please congratulate Don Danard for identifying him. Los Angeles Times file photo   Update: Dolenz and Faith Domergue in "Vendetta." Here's a photo of our mystery guest and a mystery companion. Please congratulate Paul Cardinal for identifying him! Los Angeles Times file photo Update: Dolenz on "The Restless Gun," 1958. Here's our mystery fellow with another firearm. Please congratulate R. Ahuna, Gregory Moore, Dru Duniway Michael Ryerson, Alexa Foreman, "Laura" fan Waldo Lydecker, Lee Ann Bailey, Cinnamon Carter, Cynthia Keillor and Anne Papineau for identifying him!   Dolenz, right, visits Jane Russell and Victor Mature on the set of "The Las Vegas Story."

Police Hunt Gunmen as Officer Fights for Life; Dodgers Win, May 1, 1959

May 1, 1959: Another LAPD officer is shot in the line of duty. Robert D. Cody will survive being hit in the stomach with a shotgun blast because his Sam Browne belt blocked some of the pellets.

A police commissioner predicts a criminal "Pearl Harbor" after Mayor Poulson proposes a $6-million cut in the LAPD budget. A family brawl in Lennox ends when Billy Chance, 17, shoots his father in the head with a .45-caliber revolver. The fight began when William Chance's wife, Frieda, threatened to leave him. And there's Mickey Cohen and Candy Barr!

A look at stresses in the workforce as young employees pressure older people to retire and make way for them. Nixon will take the 1960 presidential election, Times political columnist Raymond Moley says. Will Democratic Sen. John F. Kennedy's Catholic faith help him or hurt him if he is a candidate for president?  "Ferd'nand" seems to be about Mrs. Ferd'nand smuggling a new dress into the house.

Sandy Koufax struggled, Duke Snider ran for his life and still the Dodgers won. They beat the Phillies, 6-4, ending a long losing streak in Philadelphia and keeping them in a virtual tie with the Milwaukee Braves for first place. Koufax was wild and didn't finish the fourth inning. The Dodgers didn't know what to do with him--he had yet to win a game in April during his career. "We can't seem to get Sandy to stop aiming the ball," Manager Walt Altson told The Times' Frank Finch. "We all know Sandy can be tough once he gets in the groove, but getting him there is the problem." Snider hit an inside the park home run to give the Dodgers the lead for good. His drive hit the top of the right-center field wall and the ball rebounded into foul territory. Snider, sore knee and all, scored standing up. The pitching hero was Art Fowler, who became best known as Billy Martin's traveling pitching coach for several of his managerial stops. Fowler had two saves with the Dodgers in 1959, and this was one of them. This was Fowler's only season with the Dodgers. He played for the Angels from 1961-64. --Keith Thursby

Nuestro Pueblo

Found on EBay -- Santa Catalina Island

This vintage photo of a young girl on the beach at Santa Catalina Island has been listed on EBay. Bidding starts at $9.99.

Matt Weinstock -- April 30, 1959

Tijuana Exile Hopes This is a further report on Roy Huerta, separated for the last 10 years from his beloved wife, Manuela, and their six children. Roy, 39, is a cook at a restaurant on Sunset Blvd. and lives with a brother on the North Side. His family lives in Tijuana. Their enforced separation dates to 1949. They were living in Los Angeles. One day they took a trip to Tijuana. Returning, Manuela panicked and gave conflicting answers at the border and was detained. Born in Mexico, she speaks little English. She was later convicted of perjury and deported. The frustrating case was first reported here Sept 13, 1957. Three weeks ago a reader, Mrs. William Rosenblatt, wrote that since it was related here the story had disturbed her and she wondered if there had been any development. I got hold of Roy and he said the situation was unchanged, which was told here. However, Francis H. Ohswaldt, deputy district director of immigration, saw the column and phoned. IT APPEARED to him that the family could be reunited under Public Law 85-316, in effect since Sept. 11, 1957. The law provides that an alien spouse or child of a U.S. citizen shall be issued a visa under certain conditions, which Manuela apparently can meet. The sad thing, he said, was that Roy and his wife didn't know that they probably have been eligible for this relief for more than a year. he was put in touch with Roy and he has alerted immigration officials at the border to expedite the case. "Perhaps," Ohswaldt said, "immigration people won't be considered the ogres they are sometimes painted." LAST WEEKEND when Roy went to Tijuana he took along his birth certificate and Army discharge -- necessary to prove his American citizenship. Monday Manuela went to the American consul there and filled out an application for a visa. If investigation shows that the requirements have been met under the law, the Huerta family should be together in six weeks or two months. "Gosh," Roy said yesterday. "I guess I better start looking for a house to rent for my six kids." It's nice to be able to print a story with a happy ending. :: YOU DON'T HEAR about it, but the six-year truce between the Communist North Koreans and the U.N. still presents uneasy moments. Ed Fleming of KNXT spent several days at Panmunjom on his recent swing around the Orient and learned that incidents keep cropping up that require meetings between the opposing forces. One time last winter Communist soldiers threw snowballs at Americans patrolling the border. And you know what those nasty Americans did? They returned the fire, only they allegedly put rocks in their snowballs.  The North Koreans charged this was a violation of the armistice. More recently they complained U.N. soldiers were throwing orange peels across the line and went through the ridiculous motion of charging another violation. :: ONLY IN L.A. -- A lady called Aunt Hallie came up to photog Bob Martin at a family gathering and said she'd like to show him some pictures. She brought out a leather-bound book with the gold letters "S.O.G. with P.I.P." on the cover. Meant "Silly Old Grandmother with Pictures in Purse." she explained to baffled Bob ... One of the girls in classified took an ad from a man wishing to sell a sorrel mare, some black Angus calves and some "wiener" pigs. In the nick of time it was corrected to "weaner." :: AT RANDOM -- Tom Cracraft puts stickers on his letters with the slogan, "Get the lead out of your gas. Stop smog!" ... Cosmopolitan for May is one great big paean to California, mostly this area. Meanwhile, back among the natives here, the heckling continues ... No truth in the rumor, Martin Ragaway says, that Cadillac dealers are raffling off a hospital ... Descriptive line by barkeep Jose Sanchez: "She's the type that orders caffeine-free coffee laced with cognac."

Paul Coates -- Confidential File, April 30, 1959

CONFIDENTIAL FILE Murdering Your Wife a High Misdemeanor What Makes Man a Wife Murderer? BY DR. PAUL POPENOE What makes men murder their wives? Perhaps you don't think the matter is especially pertinent to you personally, but let's talk about it anyway. After you finish reading, you can always draw your own conclusions. It's usually taken for granted that such husbands are either insane or such dyed-in-the-wool criminals that they deserve to be executed. Maybe their unfortunate wives were dutiful, loving women who stood by their husbands through all their troubles and tried to make men of them. And for all this, the wives were repaid for their sacrifices by finally being strangled or bludgeoned to death. That's the common story and it's sometimes true. Psychiatrists, however, wondered whether it was the whole story. Two of them decided to try to find out. Dr. Jacob Morgenstern and Dr. Albert A. Kurland, both with the state of Maryland, began to study the wife murderers and the wives they murdered. The psychiatrists sought out the relatives, the friends and neighbors of the victims to testify. Most of these wives, they found, seemed at first sight to be admirable women who were putting up with unreliable, brutal, violent, or irrational husbands. Further study, however, revealed that the husbands weren't like that before they married. Prior to their marriages, they had led sober and normal lives. There were certainly great weaknesses in their personalities, but these might have been kept from coming to the surface if the marriages had been different. Indeed, the psychiatrists decided in these cases the husbands and wives were pretty well suited to each other. They simply didn't know how to manage their marriages. In many instances, the wives would depend on nagging instead of using [illegible] methods to repair [illegible]. They [illegible] ... resented this, the more martyred the wives became. Still the wives kept after the husbands. The men would resort to drink; the women would become increasingly frigid and hostile. Things went from bad to worse. Feeling themselves to be failures, the husbands struck back at their wives by impulsively asserting their own power. And the net result would be swift and violent murder. This may be an oversimplified picture of what these psychiatrists found and it may not apply to your marriage. But the general conclusion of these psychiatrists applies to every marriage, namely, that when a marriage isn't going well, the couple should find a competent marriage counselor and get help in heading in the right direction and staying on the right track. In a large number of cases, such a procedure could prevent divorce; sometimes it could even prevent murder. At least, that's what the two psychiatrists had to say. As I mentioned earlier in the column, you must draw your own conclusion. In the meantime, I'll be glad to supply any reader with the name of a thoroughly competent marriage counselor near the reader's home. To get this information, simply send your request to me, c/o The Mirror News, Los Angeles, but please enclose a stamped return envelope. Dr. Paul Popenoe, a colleague of mine whose wisdom appears regularly in the family section of this newspaper, has gone and done it. In yesterday's editions he trod boldly on a topic which has been banned from respectable parlour conversation since as long as I can remember. Which shows how keen my memory is. My family never even had a parlour. (And, if they did have one, they would have spelled it parlor, not parlour. They weren't folks to put on airs.) In his usual breezy, frank, intimate manner of expression, the doctor discussed the pros and cons of murdering one's wife. In an article headed "What Makes a Man Murder His Wife?" he began by pointing out that the questions is vital to every one of us. "Perhaps you don't think the matter is especially pertinent to you personally," he prefaced his observations. But then he added, ominously: "After you finish reading this article, then you can draw your own conclusions." I was almost afraid to read on. But I did. His point, as I get it, is that maybe my marriage, or your marriage, has had the symptoms all along and we've just overlooked them. Taken no positive action, if you know what I mean. And don't give me that high-and-mighty look. You know what I mean. The basic symptom, according to the doctor, is a nagging wife. A study made by two psychiatrists whom he quoted revealed that most men who rub out their spouses were sober, likable individuals before they took the vows. Average Joes just like you an me. "There were certain great weaknesses in their personality," he admitted, "but these might have been kept from coming to the surface if the marriages had been different." Trouble was, the wives simply didn't know how to manage their husbands. Instead of using constructive methods to improve them, they nagged. Day in, day out. Until finally, PFFT! No wife. When I got that far along in Dr. Popenoe's frank discussion, I began to realize that he was performing a perilous but necessary public service. If those were the only symptoms, it's time people were made aware. In my personal case, fortunately, there's no problem. I'm not the type of man who lies around the house and lets his wife nag him. In fact, I seldom go home. But you. I'm worried about you. Any one of you is liable to have a murder rap hanging over you head tomorrow. And this thing could spread into a very unpleasant epidemic. Dr. Popenoe obviously deserves our thanks for bringing this touchy matter into the open. How You Can Beat the Rap And he's gone a step further. He also points out that not all husbands with nagging wives end up doing time. Some just slip out and drive to Reno. It's up to each reader to figure out his own solution. But while you're thinking it over, Dr. Popenoe generously offers to supply you with the name of a thoroughly competent marriage counselor near your home. Write care of The Mirror News and enclose a stamped, self-addressed envelope. And if that doesn't work, get in touch with me. I know a guy who knows a guy from out of town who works fast and clean and cheap and keeps his mouth shut.

In the Theaters -- April 30, 1985

Israel Raids Egypt, Celtics Beat Lakers, April 30, 1969

The 1960s were surely the hair decade. Ask your mom if she ever had a hairdo like this model in a Broadway ad.

President Nixon urges "backbone" against student unrest. Israel strikes Egypt.

Nixon plays "Happy Birthday" for Duke Ellington.

A UCLA dean resigns over student militancy.   An oil company packs up its drilling equipment after exploring for oil under City Hall and other buildings in the Civic Center ... and a man is honored for chasing down a freeway gunman.

School officials eliminate a song and some lines from a production of "The Fantasticks" being presented for high school students.

After Game 4 of the NBA finals, the Boston Celtics talked about luck. The Lakers talked about losing. Sam Jones' desperation, falling-down shot that somehow managed to go in was the difference in another close game, this time an 89-88 Boston victory. The series, once controlled by the Lakers, was now even at 2-2 and headed back to the Forum. "I guess if the Good Lord wanted you to win, you'd win. ... Maybe we deserved to lose," said Jerry West. "Luck won out--no doubt about it. Those losses are the toughest kind to take when you have it won and it goes the other way," said John Havlicek. Like most high-pressure games, there was controversy near the end. One Laker turnover was caused by an aggressive Boston double team or a foul that wasn't called, depending on your point of view. Another dispute centered on whether Elgin Baylor was out of bounds in the closing seconds. That call turned the ball back to Boston for Jones' final shot. --Keith Thursby

Union Station Turns 70

Photograph by the Los Angeles Times Dec. 23, 1935: City Hall casts a long shadow over downtown Los Angeles in this photograph showing where Union Station will be built. Notice the large storage tanks of the gasworks in the upper right-hand corner.