"That was the most terrible thing I've ever seen. I've witnessed 52 hangings. I could find nothing humane about it and I never want to watch anything like that again."
--Father George O'Meara, prison chaplain
"Hanging is a damned sight quicker and better."
--San Quentin guard
"These men went easy."
--Dan Cox, Sacramento County sheriff
A 59-year-old man gets a day in jail for carrying a blackjack on his honeymoon with his 14-year-old wife.
Above, one movie that is not on Netflix(although "Bitter Victory" is available) ... Below, The Times' editorial page pays tribute to attorney Joseph Scott ... and notes the fifth anniversary of Jonas Salk's announcement that he had discovered a polio vaccine... Notice that The Times published a daily Bible passage. This one is from Revelation.
Granted, President Eisenhower's health was an important issue by 1958, but it's hard to picture anyone pitching a story about his dental work for Page 1 ... An atomic-powered rocket to the moon ... And a major setback for Caryl Chessman, who was seeking an appeal on the grounds that the record of his trial couldn't be recovered because the court reporter died before transcribing it and no one else could read it.
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.
Oh for the life of a court beat reporter in 1957: Confidential magazine, an appeal by convicted killer Caryl Chessman and the murder trial of L. Ewing Scott,
not to mention the daily grind of the court calendar. There are so many
wonderful cases, but alas, only one Larry Harnisch, and I worry that I
won't be able to do justice to all the details. (The Confidential
magazine case, if you were wondering, resulted in a hung jury and
promises of a retrial).
The Scott case is particularly
significant because of its unusual challenge: The prosecution had to
persuade a jury that the defendant was guilty even though police were
never able to find the (alleged) victim's body. I was fortunate to be
given access to the district attorney's files on the Scott case and
they are massive, but far too extensive for the purposes of a blog.
So for today, let me introduce a few of the main characters as jury selection begins.
Ray Graham / Los Angeles Times For the prosecution, Deputy Dist. Atty. J. Miller Leavy, shown in 1953 during the trial of Barbara Graham.
Howard W. Maxwell / Los Angeles Times
And the defendant, Leonard Ewing Scott, caught off-guard by Times photographer Howard W.
Maxwell with a miniature camera, joking with reporters in his jail cell,
April 26, 1956.
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.
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.
By trying to hustle along a little too fast, it trips over its own ethical skirts.
And a living example of what can happen when it does came into town
last night. He was tall and gaunt and rather ugly, and his prison
pallor contradicted the jaunty cut of his gray flannel suit.
His name--if you're not aware by now--is Caryl Chessman.
His residence for the last nine years has been San Quentin's Death Row.
Half a dozen times, dates for his extermination have been set.
But so far, because justice was in an apparent hurry to deal him the
worst, he has outlived some 70 fellow death row inmates, plus the
warden with whom he was in constant strife.
Chessman is here with a claim against justice.
It was, recently, a good enough claim to cause the U.S. Supreme Court
to overrule our state and district courts' rejections of his latest
appeal for a new trial.
Since his confinement, Chessman--a warped but plainly brilliant
man--has managed to dig up some startling charges about events which
followed his trial and conviction.
The court reporter who took the transcript died during the trial.
His notes, according to later testimony, were considered illegible by
five other court reporters asked to turn them into final transcript.
But then there appeared a man who said he could transcribe them.
His name was Stanley Fraser.
He was given the job and eventually he produced a final transcript.
This, naturally, was important to Chessman. He needed it as a basis for appeals.
But on reading it, he felt that it was inaccurate.
From death row, he began an astonishing investigation.
First, he found, Stanley Fraser was a relative of J. Miller Leavy, prosecutor in the case. He was Leavy's wife's uncle.
Then he alleges that he dug up a police record on Fraser which included drunk arrests stringing from July 1948 to February 1951.
Attorney George Davis, representing Chessman, called trial Judge
Charles W. Fricke to the stand at a Marin County hearing last year.
Fricke stated that he had no knowledge of any relationship between Leavy, the prosecutor, and Fraser.
In his latest book, "The Face of Justice" (to be released this week), Chessman makes further charges.
He alleges that Fraser and Leavy held several meetings on the
transcript. He charges that the pair visited two of the prosecution's
top witnesses for other conferences.
He says that Fraser received three times the normal fee for his work.
If it's all true, it doesn't add up to a very fair shake for a man who is doomed without a complete and accurate transcript.
Caryl Chessman is possibly the most widely detested criminal in California history.
He's not only hated for the horrible nature of his crimes, but for the
smug, self-assured unrepentant attitude he has maintained over the last
nine years.
That same attitude was apparent when I saw him at County Jail yesterday.
He suffers from a chronic sneer aimed at all of society.
Chessman is a weird paradox--a literate, intelligent man, capable of vicious criminal acts.
However, no matter what his attitudes or his crimes, any man is entitled to due process of law.
If he hasn't been getting it, and the U.S. Supreme Court has indicated that to be true, he should.
While L. Ewing Scott uses every possible ploy to delay his extradition
from Michigan, the district attorney's office has appointed top
prosecutor J. Miller Leavy to handle the case. Leavy has just finished
the Edward S. Wein trial and has previously won convictions against "red light bandit" Caryl Chessman and Barbara "I Want to Live!" Graham.
Leavy is a tough, hard-working prosecutor who prepares his cases
meticulously. The Scott case, however, will be one of his biggest
challenges: There's no body. And so he must prove that alleged victim
Evelyn Scott's well-established patterns of behavior suddenly ceased.
In Detroit's Wayne County Jail, Scott has been refusing to eat,
complaining of health problems and refusing to answer reporters'
questions. In a jailhouse interview, the Mirror only got two responses:
"How are you?"
"Terrible."
"If you go back to Los Angeles will you ask for a change of trial location?"
"Whoever my lawyer is out there will have to determine that."
Although Scott seemed fine during conversations with attorney Gabriel
Cohn, he complained that he was desperately ill, prompting an
examination at a nearby hospital, where he was found to be in perfect
health. Sheriff's officials announced that Detective Chief J. Gordon
Bowers and Detective Sgt. Ward Hallinen will be flying to Detroit to
bring Scott back to Los Angeles as he plans to stop fighting
extradition.
"It's
like a bad dream," he said. "You keep thinking you'll awaken and find it's a bad
dream."
Edward Simon Wein, given five death sentences under California's "Little
Lindbergh Law" for a series of kidnappings and rapes, said: "I was convicted
before I ever came to trial. The papers said all kinds of bad things about me.
They called me all kinds of bad names, including 'beast.' There was so much
prejudice I was convicted."
The 32-year-old painting contractor was identified by seven women, but he said
they were all wrong. "They were mistaken--honestly, the first time," he said.
"But then they couldn't change their minds."
"A half-hour after I was arrested, a Hollywood detective said they were going to
make a [Caryl] Chessman out of me. The prosecutor in my case is the one who
prosecuted Chessman. I had the same charges pressed against me as Chessman and
the verdict was the same."
Of California's death penalty, Wein said: "I don't think it's human. It's
something more or less out of the Middle Ages."
According to police, Wein, who lived at
418
S. Hamel Road, answered classified ads placed by women. He told them he
would have to check with his wife about whatever was being sold, then pretended
to have lost the stem from his watch. He gained control over his victims when
they stooped down to look for the missing watch stem and threatened to kill them
if they made any noise.
The attacks occurred over 18 months in Alhambra, Hollywood, South-Central,
Burbank and elsewhere in the San Fernando Valley. He was arrested by a private
officer at a Long Beach cocktail party after one of the victims said she
recognized Wein when he stepped on her foot. She said: "I'd never forget what he
looked like."
Wein was prosecuted by Deputy Dist. Atty. J. Miller Leavy, a formidable lawyer
who handled the Chessman, Barbara Graham and L. Ewing Scott cases. When
Wein said he'd never in his life answered a classified ad, Leavy produced
Shirley Tierstein, who identified a check Wein wrote to her for an electric
stove. Tierstein said Wein came into her home at
753
S. Mariposa in Burbank, but fled when her son Kenneth, who
was sick and home from school, called out to her.
The prosecution also introduced partial
fingerprints matching Wein's taken from a glass that he allegedly used to drink
water at one victim's home.
Wein was sentenced to death. His Dec. 5, 1958, execution was upheld by the state
Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his appeal. However, the state
high court granted a delay pending a second appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The mother of one of his victims, who was 14 at the time she was raped, wrote to
The Times in 1959: "What is wrong with the course of justice? ... To think of the
possibility of such a man getting back on the streets again, free to come into
homes again to rape, rob or kill!!"
The U.S. Supreme Court denied his second appeal, which claimed inadequate
counsel. But in June 1959, Gov. Pat Brown agreed to grant Wein a clemency
hearing. Brown reduced Wein's sentence to life in prison "without the
possibility of parole" because the kidnapping was technical--he only moved the
victims within their homes.
"I feel that only where there is kidnapping in the true sense of the word, with
bodily harm, should the death penalty be involved," Brown said.
In 1966, Brown further reduced Wein's sentence, making him eligible for parole
and on Sept. 16, 1974, after 17 years on death row, Edward Simon Wein was a free
man.
Then on Aug. 8, 1975, the strangled body of Dorothy George, 52, was
found in the bathtub of her home at
5935
Abernathy Drive in Westchester after she placed an ad for a recliner on a
supermarket bulletin board. On Sept. 5, a woman living in Palms who had posted items for sale on
a supermarket bulletin board was raped by a man who claimed he had lost the stem
of his watch. He began filling her bathtub with water but fled when a neighbor
slammed a door.
Over lunch a few days later, Venice Division detectives were discussing the
cases with retired investigator Robert S. Wright, who recalled the series of
"watch stem" rapes from 1956. After learning that Wein had been paroled, they
arrested him and charged him with murder.
Several of his earlier victims testified during his 1976 murder trial. A
63-year-old woman said that on Dec. 15, 1955, Wein came to her Crenshaw district
home to look at a fur stole and dining room set that she was selling. He choked
her "so long and so hard it ruptured the blood vessels in my eyes," she said.
A 54-year-old woman testified that on March 12, 1956, Wein locked her 5-year-old
son in a closet at her Encino home before raping her after she advertised a
mattress and box springs for sale.
The testimony of a woman who was a 19-year-old concert pianist when she was
raped May 11, 1956, was read into the record because "her physical and mental
condition is still so fragile that she cannot testify in person," The Times
said.
In June 1976, Edward Simon Wein, the "watch stem rapist," was convicted of rape
and murder and sentenced to prison.
As he said in 1957: "It's like a bad dream. You keep thinking you'll awaken and
find it's a bad dream."
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
Subscribe to this Blog - What is RSS?
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.