Jack the Ripper Strikes Again

July 17, 1889: Another horrible murder by Jack the Ripper.

Killing in Chinatown

July 15, 1889: Siegel the Hatter, under the Nadeau Hotel. July 15, 1889: A killing in Chinatown. The old newspapers never spared the gruesome details.

Body of Missing Woman Found in Car Trunk; Dodgers Win in 13th Inning

July 10, 1959: A heatwave sears Southern California as a fire threatens homes in the Linda Vista neighborhood of Pasadena.

More attacks are feared in Vietnam after a bombing kills two American advisors. An Inglewood police officer putting a ticket on a car that hadn't been moved for two days discovers the partially clothed body of a missing Fresno woman in the trunk. On the front seat is a sweater and a pair of Capri pants, a front tooth and blood. The victim is identified as Mary Jean Prestridge, 26, the wife of a truck driver and the mother of two children. Police are looking for a young man seen with Prestridge in Fresno shortly before she vanished.  Caryl Chessman plans a new legal battle against his death sentence. The court reporter in Chessman's original trial died during the proceedings and court reporters said his notes were illegible. When a reporter was finally found who could transcribe the notes, Chessman discovered that he was an uncle of the prosecutor's wife. Chessman has been in prison since 1948.

The Dodgers' games against the Milwaukee Braves are fascinating to study since the teams finished the regular season tied and faced each other in a playoff to decide the 1959 National League champion. In a typically close game, the Dodgers edged the Braves, 4-3, in 13 innings. The Dodgers moved into second place with the victory, wedged between the first-place Giants and the third-place Braves. What stood out was how pitching has changed. Milwaukee's Warren Spahn took the loss after pitching 5 2/3 innings in relief of starter Joey Jay. Spahn was still a top pitcher. He would win 21 games in 1959, the fourth of six consecutive seasons with at least 20 wins. What was he doing coming out of the bullpen? The Dodgers' relief staff was similarly quiet. Roger Craig was the winning pitcher and he really earned it, pitching the final 11 innings. There's a reference in the story to how few pitches Craig threw, but 11 innings is a lot under any circumstance. Wonder how many pitchers the Dodgers and Braves would use in a similar game today. And this wasn't a rare case. The next afternoon, Don Drysdale came out of the bullpen to pitch the Dodgers past the Braves in the final game of the series. Drysdale had pitched two scoreless innings the night before, but the game was rained out in the third inning. He was scheduled to pitch the first game of the next series in Cincinnati but was called in when Sandy Koufax struggled. There was no one else? Drysdale pitched six innings. It's impossible to imagine a current manager juggling such a star pitcher. -- Keith Thursby

Black Man Survives Lynching

July 10, 1899: Dick "Trilby" Williams, an African American charged with killing two white men, survives being lynched because the marshal of Alma, Kan., cut him down after six minutes. Although this story says Williams wasn't expected to live, a story three days later reported that Williams' neck had not been broken and he was likely to survive. The Times never reported anything further on whether he was tried.

Executive's Killing Reveals Double Life

View Larger Map Seco Street, Pasadena, in the vicinity of the killing, via Google maps' street view. George T. Judd lived a model life as far as anyone could tell. He was a respected financial executive, and he and his wife, Margaret, were often listed in The Times' society columns. Judd belonged to the Kiwanis, was active in the Republican Party, supported the Pasadena Playhouse and attended All Saints Episcopal Church. He and his wife raised a son and a daughter in a home on Lagunita Road in an upscale Pasadena neighborhood.  When he was killed in 1948 at the age of 55, Judd was vice president of West Coast Bond and Mortgage Co. and living alone at 840 Seco Street, a new, 2,200-square-foot home near the Rose Bowl. His wife, Margaret, had died in 1945 and another life, one he had been leading all along in great secrecy, took over. We don't know for sure that Judd was gay, although it would explain what happened to him. The Times never addressed the question directly, but left the strong implication that he was. One story said he "had no particular women friends" since his wife's death and quoted Pasadena homicide Detective Lt. Cecil H. Burlingame as saying: "We are not looking for a woman in the case." What we do know is that Judd had a history of being beaten and robbed by men he picked up hitchhiking or in bars, and eventually one of them killed him. The first incident reported in The Times occurred in San Francisco 20 years earlier. As he recovered at University of California Hospital, Judd told police he picked up a stranger who offered him a "headache tablet." The pill made him sick and the stranger beat him and took his car, which police recovered outside the city. In reporting the attack, The Times noted that Judd had gone to a Mill Valley ranch the previous summer after resigning from his job at a Pasadena bank due to health problems. Nothing appeared in the paper for two decades, but homicide detectives learned that he had been beaten by two hitchhikers about 1936 during a trip to San Francisco. The beatings and robberies became more frequent in the year before his death. On Aug. 30, 1947, Judd met two men in a bar and had them drive him home. He told police that one of the men, named Tex, threatened him with a knife and when he ran for help, the men stole his car, which police found wrecked. He also told police he suspected the men of burglarizing his house. Although he never reported anything to authorities, friends told homicide investigators that in the six months before he was killed, Judd had been beaten and robbed several times, with his attackers usually taking his wristwatch.   Two days before his death, Judd contacted a neighbor who was a building contractor to see about getting a shower head replaced. He explained that he let three men spend the night at his house and one of them had broken the fixture. His daughter found him Jan. 29, 1948. She came over in the morning, looked through a window, saw him in bed and assumed he was sleeping. She returned in the afternoon, went in and found him dead. She contacted one of her father's business associates, who called the police.   Although Judd was strangled and stabbed in the neck, and a bloody fork and a carving knife had been left in the kitchen sink, the daughter assumed Judd died of natural causes, "pulled a sheet over her father's body and 'tidied up a bit' while waiting for the doctor," The Times said.    Homicide investigators soon focused on the gritty bars around Hill and 3rd streets in downtown Los Angeles because Judd "often visited resorts below his social status," The Times said. Judd's home was thoroughly checked for fingerprints that might have survived his daughter's cleaning and his friends were fingerprinted to eliminate their prints from the killer's. In October 1948, police arrested a suspect at 6th and Hill streets: a 19-year-old drifter from Yakima, Wash., named Edgar Eugene Bentley. An off-duty detective recognized Bentley from a photo released by Pasadena police based on leads from the downtown bars Judd patronized. A crime scene investigator matched Bentley to fingerprints found on the refrigerator in Judd's home and on a bottle of soda water. According to police, Bentley said: "I met Mr. Judd at the tavern and we went to his home at 840 Seco Drive, Pasadena. We had several drinks. Mr. Judd made a sudden lunge at my throat -- and from then on I can't remember.... I sort of blacked out." Bentley also told police: "I must have done it -- there was nobody else there but me ..." Under questioning, Bentley said he hitchhiked out of Los Angeles the next day. He pawned Judd's wristwatch in New Orleans, then sold the ticket for $5. Within a few days, police traced the watch to a shop whose owner "forgot" to report it. On Jan. 14, 1949, Bentley pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to five years to life at San Quentin. In 1958, he and two companions escaped from a remote prison honor camp at High Rock in Humboldt County. The men held up a bar in Redding, Calif., took $250 and forced 11 people into a washroom. Bentley was captured during a police chase after the men ran a Highway Patrol roadblock in a stolen 1956 Mercury. In 1969, Bentley escaped from the Miramonte Conservation Camp, a minimum security facility east of Fresno, and was captured several hours later. Washington death records list an Edgar E. Bentley who died July 11, 1995, at the age of 65. Judd was survived by his children, mother, sister and half brother. He was cremated at Mountain View Mausoleum in Altadena after funeral services at All Saints. Note: Thanks to Dick Morris for help in research with this post.

Funeral Home Refuses to Give Up Body of Murder Victim

July 9, 1899: The coroner gets enmeshed in a grim dispute over the body of a murder victim. Before C.D. Howry, the coroner's preferred funeral home, could claim the remains of Mrs. Earl Hanchette, Bresee and Shafer, a rival company, took the body after being hired by the victim's closest relative. The coroner demanded that Bresee return the body but the company refused. And Michael McGrath, an East Los Angeles scissors grinder, is killed when his horse runs away and he is thrown from his wagon.

Downtown L.A. Is Red, White and Blue

July 4, 1889: The cable cars and the engine house are decorated for the Fourth of July ... and two neighboring ranchers settle their differences at the blacksmith shop.

Grand Jury Vice Probe! Gilmore Field Expanded

"Put That Pistol Down, Young Lady."

Keith's 1949 post on Gilmore Field has dropped us in the middle of an extremely complicated grand jury investigation of the Los Angeles Police Department. To summarize: Officers James Parslow, Thomas C. Lindholm and Port A. Stevens were suspended by a police board that included future Chief William Parker for using excessive force during an arrest. The officers were partners of Sgt. Charles Stoker, a figure in the Brenda Allen scandal,  and they accused police officials of trying to undermine Chief C.B. Horrall to obtain control of vice in Los Angeles.   This is quite a page: Louise Overell, acquitted of helping Bud Gollum kill her parents, plans to get married. Police search for leads in the Green Twig murder of Louise Springer, who was kidnapped while sitting in a car a few blocks from the Black Dahlia crime scene.

City and county officials look for ways to keep chronic alcoholics out of the legal system. .   Episcopal humor! Ludovico Muratori, on location for "God's Earth," is killed by fumes from Stromboli volcano. Leah Ruth Chase says her husband, screenwriter Borden Chase, is having an affair with her daughter from a previous marriage. She wants a handgun permit -- and she wants her husband's gun permit revoked. I'm amazed this got into The Times -- even as a one-column ad.

The postwar building boom reached the minor leagues. The Hollywood Stars planned to transform Gilmore Field by turning bleacher seats into about 260 box seats and 1,000 grandstand seats. "We hope this will take a little pressure off the demand for box seats and reserved grandstand seats," said Oscar Reichow, the team's business manager. The right-field fence also would be removed so about 4.000 bleacher seats could be added. Here's a silent home movie showing the ballpark in 1957. Looks like the plans might have been altered or not completed. --Keith Thursby

Mother Kills Dance Teacher Who Molested Daughter

June 21, 1889: Mattie Marlette accuses dance teacher Alfred Sullivan of molesting her 3-year-old daughter and shoots him to death. Many people, especially the noirists, prefer the papers of the 1930s and '40s, but I think the 1880s-1910 period is just as fascinating. Los Angeles was a wild, crazy frontier town that was growing up.

Body of Missing Executive Found; Nolan Ryan's Close Call With History

June 18, 1959, the introduction of Charlie Brown's sister Sally begins a story line  about the the births of children that quickly turns dark. June 19, 1979: In 20 years, "Peanuts" has become a sitcom, mildly amusing in a nonthreatening way. June 19, 1979: The body of Victor J. Weiss is found in the trunk of his Rolls-Royce in a North Hollywood parking structure. Note the bylines: Bob Rawitch, Bill Boyarsky, Steve Harvey, Tom Paegel, Kris Lindgren, Paul Jacobs, Bruce Keppel ...  and Kevin Roderick! Notice that we referred to Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke as "Mrs. Burke" on second reference and in headlines. Wow. Nolan Ryan flirted with history again. He came within five outs of pitching his fifth career no-hitter, which would have broken his tie with the Dodgers' Sandy Koufax for the most in a career. Oscar Gamble singled with one out in the eighth inning to break up the gem. Ryan settled for a two-hitter and a 5-0 victory over Texas at Anaheim Stadium. It was not Ryan's first close call trying for his fifth no-hitter. He was 9-3, with two two-hitters and another two three-hitters. "Any time to get that close to it you think about it," he told The Times' Mark Heisler. "I'd be lying to you if I told you that wasn't true." Ryan's catcher, Tom Donohue, called the game his greatest thrill in baseball, which made him quite a bit more excited than Ryan. "He's been through it," Donohue said. "I never caught a no-hitter." --Keith Thursby