Dec. 22, 1968
Los Angeles
Photograph by Boris Yaro / The Los Angeles Times
Police Officer John Boddie of the Hollywood Division hands a doll to one of 250 youngsters who received Christmas presents after officers took up collection to provide toys and food to needy families in the area.
Oct. 19, 1957
Los Angeles
Perhaps you remember publicist Desmond Slattery from Paul Coates' Aug. 22, 1957, column.
In brief, he was selling crickets as pets.
This time, however, his problem is roaches--or rather, a roach.
Slattery and his roommate, actor Scott Brady (real name Gerald Kenneth Tierney), were arrested at 8929 Hollywood Hills Road
in a major LAPD raid in which four officers, acting on a tip that drug
parties were being held at the home, recovered: the butt of a marijuana
cigarette and, yes, a single joint.
Aside from the humorous situation of Sgt. Marty Brennan from "He Walked by Night"
being busted for drugs, there's a serious point here and not just the
relatively minuscule amount of drugs, compared to today's arrests.
The district attorney's office dropped the case because it would reveal
the identify of one of the narcotics details' "most reliable
informants," The Times said. You might be asking why the police didn't
think of this before they staged the raid. Me too.
"All I can say is a woman is the cause of it all," Slattery mourned,
according to The Times. "You can't shake down every woman who comes
into your place."
OK, here's how it went down. Promise not to laugh:
Brady "invited two girls up to blast some tea and get high," Sgt. John
E. O'Grady said. (Right daddy-O. Let's throw on some hip platters and
groove to Kerouac. He is a real gone cat).
Slattery said neither he nor Brady knew the women, but that one of them
called and arranged for Brady to meet them in Hollywood.
Brady came home with a blonde and a Eurasian. When Slattery went into
the kitchen, he found the blonde jiggling the shutters as if she were
signaling police.
"They came in like the Russian army," Slattery said despite Brady's warning against "talking too much," The Times said.
Police rejected the men's allegations implicating the women. "The girls
had nothing to do with the narcotics charge," O'Grady said. "They were
brought there by Scott Brady from someplace in Hollywood. We released
them after we were perfectly satisfied that they had nothing to do with
the narcotics charge."
In December, however, an officer told prosecutors that to "disclose the
identity of the two women would be to unmask one of his most reliable
informants." The officer said he could not do that "in good
conscience," The Times reported.
In other words, police got complaints that Brady and Slattery were
throwing drug parties at the house. They had an informant contact the
men, go to the home, get the men to smoke some dope and signal the
police. The cops release the women and bust the men. Any lawyers in the
audience want to weigh in?
Brady, who died in 1985, had a long career in TV. The Social Security
Death Index lists a Desmond Slattery, born Sept. 19, 1914, who died in
Houston, Jan. 4, 1977.
Sgt. John O'Grady apparently became a private investigator and wrote the 1974 book "O'Grady,"
in which he recounted being a bodyguard for Linda Lovelace. Later on,
according to The Times clips, he was hired by relatives to find out
what became of missing "Cotton Club" promoter Roy Radin. California
death records list two men named John E. O'Grady, one of whom died in
in Los Angeles County in 1990 at the age of 68.
As for the two women, we don't know. But you hipsters watch out for a blonde and a Eurasian. They're with the fuzz.
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Bonus fact: John O'Grady also took part in the drug raid involving Saundra Maazel.
Sept. 16, 1957
Los Angeles
Franklyn West Storer, 50, woke up on a Saturday morning to discover
that his beloved 16-year-old daughter, Mary Alice, had taken a fatal
overdose of sleeping pills. In despair, he also took a fatal overdose.
Mary
had lived with her father since her parents' divorce and in her brief
life, developed a love of classical music, so Franklyn bought records
for her, about $1,000 worth, which police found scattered around the
home. Before he killed himself, Franklyn placed a few autographed
pictures of Mary's favorite classical composer around her body, The
Times said.
His sister, Lucille Miller of National City, found the bodies in the Storer home at 5750 Camerford Ave.
after becoming alarmed by two letters from Franklyn saying that he was
afraid Mary would kill herself and that if she did, "there would not be
anything for me to live for."
Beyond that brief, tragic story,
The Times offers no explanation of what happened. Was Mary a performer?
An aspiring composer? We simply don't know. But a further search
reveals at least a few details.
California death records say that Franklyn was born in Ohio and reveal that his wife's maiden name was Bettencourt.
He doesn't appear in the 1929, 1936 or 1938 online Los Angeles city directories, but is listed in 1939 as living at 511 S. Wilton Place, apparently an apartment house.
Franklyn took out a legal notice in The Times on Nov. 14, 1940, saying
that he would only be responsible for his own debts and the vital
records for March 13, 1942, list a divorce action by Franklyn W. Storer
vs. Victoria B. Storer.
According to the 1942 Los Angeles city
directory, Franklin W. Storer was an assistant electrical tester at the
Department of Water and Power and was living at 5722 Waring Ave.,
precisely one block from the death scene. Eliza C. McElwain, widow of
J.W. McElwain, was also living at that address. Because it was during
World War II, she could have been a landlady.
The 1956 street directory only lists Franklyn as living at 5750 Camerford.
The
Social Security Death Index has nothing on Franklyn, but lists a
Victoria B. Storer, born Aug. 30, 1913, died Jan. 14, 2002, in Turlock,
Calif.
Unfortunately, none of these fragmentary details explain the tragedy. We can only speculate.
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Read on »
 July 31, 1957
Los Angeles
In the continuing assaults across the city, a North Hollywood housewife
fought off an intruder while a 60-year-old Hollywood woman was saved
from strangling by the staff of her Hollywood apartment building after
she was grabbed from behind in the hallway, gagged and raped.
Mildred Chastain, 40, 11228 1/2 Emelita St.,
said she was watching TV about 1 a.m. on July 31, 1957, as she waited
for her husband, Robert, to get home from his job at a liquor store.
She heard scratching at the screen door and thought it was the cat
trying to get in. Chastain opened the door and a masked gunman barged
into the house.
"I guess I was foolish to take the chance, but the next thing I knew I
was scratching at his face and trying to knock the gun out of his
hand," she said. "He grabbed me with his free hand but I had him off
balance. I knocked him against the washing machine. Then I screamed
like crazy."
According to the Mirror, 30 LAPD officers joined by six officers from
the Burbank Police Department made a house-to-house search for the
attacker, who had been prowling the neighborhood for two months.
In Hollywood, an unidentified woman told police she was going into her 12th-floor apartment at 1811 N. Whitley on
the afternoon of July 30 when she was grabbed from behind. She said she
never got a look at the rapist who blindfolded her, tied her wrists
with a silk stocking and gagged her.
Although she was tied up, the woman knocked the receiver off her
telephone to summon help. The desk clerk and the janitor found her
nearly dead from "a knotted garment in her mouth," The Times said.
Police Chief William H. Parker said the Hollywood attack was like the stranglings of Marjorie Hipperson and Ruth Goldsmith.
To be continued.
In the meantime, read more about 1811 N. Whitley. Search for Oct. 12, 1947, entry at the 1947project.
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 July 9, 1957
Los Angeles
Detectives investigating the killing of nurse Marjorie Hipperson
are questioning a con artist with ulcers who was an orderly
at Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital, where Hipperson and her fiance,
Dr. Walter Deike, worked.
Monte Melvin Krier, 29, who is being held on forgery charges in the
prison ward of General Hospital, says he knew Hipperson and saw her on
the day she was killed. He says he left Hollywood Presbyterian shortly
after the slaying out of fear of the police. "I quit my job because I
knew they were going to find out about my record," said Krier, who had
served a total of 11 years in prison for forgery and burglary.
"Miss Hiperson was a very friendly girl," Krier said. "We had lunch
several times and we talked quite a bit while we were working. The last
time I saw her was the day she was murdered."
Krier reluctantly admitted that he knew where Hipperson lived because
both of them had gotten a ride home from work with a fellow employee.
After he was arrested on the forgery charges ("I have a champagne
appetite with a beer pocketbook," he said) detectives began questioning
him in the Hipperson case. "They fingerprinted me twice," Krier said.
"They thought my palm print matched ones found in the apartment but now
I think they have cleared me."
(Krier's con worked this way: He would check into a hospital for
ulcers, then write hot checks for jewelry and clothing to merchants
who assumed he was trustworthy because he was in a hospital. When he
got enough merchandise, he skipped out of the hospital).
Detectives are also investigating an attack on Carol Boyer, 24, 2113 N. Rodney Drive
in Los Feliz, who fought off a man who attacked her with a pipe about
4:30 a.m. while she slept. Neighbors say the attacker had canvassed the
apartment building two weeks earlier by posing as a census taker
seeking information on single people.
Police also arrested Conrado Hernandez, 44, 9339 S. Western Ave., after firing a warning shot as he was allegedly breaking into a home at 416 N. Orange Grove Ave.
Monte Krier died Jan. 4, 1998, in Los Angeles. He was 69, according to California death records.
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July 1, 1957
Los Angeles
Detective Sgts. W.R. "Bud" Schottmiller and J.B. Close of the Hollywood
Division have little to go on after a prowler broke into an apartment
to rape a young woman somewhere on Irving Boulevard (the newspapers,
incredibly, did not give the victim's address this time--more about this later).
Maybe he was the same man who killed Marjorie Hipperson, or the one who killed Ruth Goldsmith--and
maybe not. Maybe he was even the same man who broke into an apartment
on Fountain and struggled with a woman before leaving.
All police know is that he came up the fire escape and broke in through
French doors about 3:30 a.m. There are some fingerprints on a 10-inch
steak knife that he left in the apartment, officials say, but only
enough to eliminate or implicate possible suspects.
To be continued...
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June 24, 1957
Los Angeles
Police Capt. Walter R. Koenig was out walking his dog in the 5500 block of Green Oak Drive, where it dead ends in the Hollywood Hills, when he found Baby Boy Doe.
He was 1 to 3 months old, and someone had wrapped him in blankets and
put him in a cardboard box. An animal discovered Baby Boy Doe and
dragged him out. "Police said the baby's legs are missing and one
appears to have been cleanly severed with a sharp instrument," the
Mirror said. He had been dead three or four days.
Koenig told investigators he had seen a young couple in the area a week
earlier. When he questioned them about what they were doing, the man
asked for directions and they left, Koenig said.
Rest in peace, Baby Boy Doe.
Koenig joined the LAPD in 1938, a watershed year in Los Angles
politics because it marked the recall of Mayor Frank Shaw and the
reform administration of Fletcher Bowron.
In 1964, he became the police chief in
Torrance. In 1969, shortly before reaching retirement age, Koenig accepted a teaching job at Georgia State
University.
In an extremely rare honor for a police officer, the American Civil
Liberties Union paid tribute to Koenig with its Courage of Conviction
award. "As chief of police, Koenig, while enforcing the law firmly and
fairly, always displayed an awareness of the rights of the individual
as embodied in the Constitution," the ACLU said.
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June 15, 1957
It can now be revealed that a dark plot against the Stanfords by the
Uclans--an offshoot of the feuding between the two universities as a
result of PCC [Pacific Coast Conference] penalties--has been
inadvertently thwarted.
Not long ago, Bob Kennedy, a Stanford alumnus in the floor covering
business in Westwood, was commissioned to supply carpeting for the
Stanford office at 621 S. Hope St., where the university's president, trustees and fundraisers meet.
A number of samples were shown, but for price and quality a beautiful job which could be dyed any color was outstanding.
However, the conservative Indians [Note: Stanford's former mascot, abandoned in the 1970s--lrh] decided it was too lush and selected a slightly cheaper pattern, thereby innocently averting future embarrassment.
It seems that Kennedy's business partners are UCLA grads and they'd
planned to treat the white rug in the dyeing process so that in about
six months the letters UCLA would appear right in the middle.
ONLY IN PURE L.A. -- A cabby told it to reporter Frank Laro:
Two men got into his cab and asked if he could take them to a place
where there were some women. (By the way, this is a frequent request
and one fraught with peril).
The cabby cagily drove them to Hollywood Cemetery, handed them the fat taxi tab and said:
"There they are, boys, dig 'em up."
He'd recognized them as vice squad officers.
June 12, 1957
Los Angeles
June 11, 1957
Los Angeles
We're parked outside a two-story apartment house at 3737 Los Feliz Blvd.
It's late, after 1 a.m. I'll warn you before we go in: I hate this
case. I can't say I like any of them, but this one I hate. It's pitiful
and tragic and I wouldn't blame you if you wanted to go for a cup of
coffee instead.
You sure? OK, come on then. That's her sedan parked at the curb.
This whole area is a hot spot for peeping Toms: It's all apartment
houses with bedrooms at the back facing dark alleys. About half a dozen
women live here and they all say they have seen men at their windows
and that someone has been rattling their doorknobs in the middle of the
night. The landlady filed a report not long ago that somebody was
stealing underwear off the clothesline and about a year ago, a woman in
Apartment 6, next to the murder scene, said some prowler slid a note
under her door:
"If you are lonely and want some company, why don't we get
acquainted. I am not trying to scare you. I think you and I could have
a good time together.
"I'm young and so are you, so let's not waste our time. A friend, I hope."
Another neighbor says a man broke in and choked her last September, but that he ran away when she started screaming.
I figure the guy may have been watching our victim and knew she was
living alone. Until a few days ago, she had a roommate--another
nurse--but the woman moved out because the victim was getting married
to a doctor. She had just come home from a wedding shower when she was
killed.
I told you it was nasty.
Notice the front door is locked and chained. She was careful. Not quite
careful enough, maybe, but pretty careful. The roommate, Margot
Wright, says that about six months ago, a young man barged into the
apartment while she was lying on the bed. Wright told police that she
grabbed her purse off the nightstand and the man laughed and ran.
Our victim is named Marjorie Lucille Hipperson, 24, and she's a nurse
at Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital. A few hours ago, the staff gave a
wedding shower for her and her fiance, Dr. Walter Deike, who's an
intern so he spends a couple nights a week at the hospital. In fact, he
got called away from the party, so Marjorie wrote him a note before she
left:
"Dear Walter: I hope you don't have too tough a night. Get a lot of sleep.
I love you.
Marjorie."
Let's go around the back. Here's where he got in: She left the kitchen
window unlocked. Police will find the screen over in the garage of a
neighbor who lives at 3745 Los Feliz. Let's go in. Don't touch anything. They're going to find prints all over the place. Notice the apartment hasn't been trashed as it would be if there was a burglary.
She was a tidy one. Here's the sweater she wore to the party, washed
and stretched out to dry on the drainboard. The rest of that outfit is
hanging in the closet. OK, here's the living room. You can see she's
laid out her clothes for the wedding trip to Chicago and is getting
ready to move. The rent runs out in a couple of days and the telephone
has already been disconnected.
You sure you don't want to turn around? OK, let's go in the bedroom.
Well, that's her, poor thing. You can see her arms and legs are
bruised from fighting with him. Her hands might have been bound at some
point, but they're not tied now. White nightgown bunched up around her
neck, left arm doubled up behind her back and her right arm stretched
out. She's been strangled with a nylon and gagged with a blue washcloth
held in place with another nylon, just like the Ruth Goldsmith case, remember? Yeah, she was raped. He apparently didn't steal anything. There's loose money on the bureau and in the drawers.
Nope, nobody heard a sound.
We better get going. In a little while, Dr. Deike is going to start wondering why she hasn't shown up for work. Remember, the phone is disconnected. He's going to come over. He'll see her car at the curb and know she's home. When she doesn't answer the door, he'll come around back and crawl in the kitchen window.
And then he'll find her here.
Walter will remarry--eventually. A woman named Joan. But five years later, he'll be gone too. He's going to go out swimming in Mendocino Bay and drown.
I told you, I hate this case.
Let's drop by Mountain View Cemetery in Altadena on our way back and pay our respects.
To be continued....
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Cliff Dektar was a copy boy for The Times in 1943. He worked for the Mirror from 1950 to 1956, when he left for ABC-TV.
On Jan. 2, 1951, Photographer Bud Gray and I were working the overnight Mirror radio car 91... after 2:30 a.m. the streets really are quiet until around 5 a.m. We had stopped at Hollywood Receiving Hospital and were headed north on Wilcox...I was driving.
The police radio came alive...69 meet 66 at Hollywood and Vine. Well, 69 was a sergeant and 66 was a district radio car and this was a most unusual call at 4:30 a.m. ... so I decided to drive by since it was only a few blocks away.
Amazing... standing on the corner by the Broadway Hollywood was Mickey Cohen... wearing his hat as usual... and waving his hands with an LAPD Officer Tommy Hutton. He was agitated.
I nudged Bud, made a U-turn on Vine and parked across the street in front of the Owl drugstore.
I turned off the ignition and strolled across Vine and listened... no note taking.
"If you'll take off your badge and come into the alley and fight me fair and square, I'll give you my wife and my car," growled Mickey.
(The blue Cadillac and his wife were parked a few feet away).
Officer Hutton had written Mickey a traffic citation for not proceeding on a green light--he had stopped to purchase a newspaper.
 Mickey refused to sign the ticket.
The sergeant arrived and explained to Mickey that by signing, he did not admit guilt, only to appear.
"If you don't sign, Mickey, we will take you to jail," the sergeant explained.
Finally, Mickey signed, walked and entered his car, and drove south on Vine.
Meanwhile Bud Gray had set his Speed Graphic so he could shoot from the hip without focusing.
Bud shot four photos... all were excellent.
We jumped back into the radio car, called the office and sped to 2nd and Spring with the photos.
By the time reporters in the police press room heard about the incident, everyone was gone, Mickey, the police and the few spectators.
We had a real beat... four good photos and details... all Page 1.
I thought of how wild Aggie Underwood, city editor of the Herald-Express, would be, as the Mirror guys had beat her team, again.
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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.