Finds ‘Husband’ Is Woman

Dr. Alice Bush of Oakland sues for divorce, charging that her husband, R.K. Morgan, failed to disclose something rather important.

Nov. 15, 1909: The lynchings in Cairo, Ill., are endorsed from the pulpit and in the press.  Saying that lawlessness was common in the area where a woman was killed, the Rev. George M. Babcock of Church of the Redeemer, Episcopalian, says: “This defiance of law and order made the lynchings necessary to secure justice.” F.A. Thielecke, editor of the Cairo Bulletin, says: “Cairo’s disgrace is not the mob, but the conditions that made the mob necessary.”

Few Killers Are Executed, Reports Show

Nov. 13, 1909: More than 100 murders were committed in the 30 years since the capital punishment law was passed, but only five killers from Los Angeles County have been executed, The Times says. A convicted killer has a 1-in-20 chance of being executed, statistics show. A severed thumb is the key evidence in the trial of Burt Thornburg on charges of trying to burglarize the store of Yee Sam, 515 N. Main St. … And a judge drops charges against a motorcyclist accused of going more than 30 mph. (He said his motorcycle wouldn’t do 20 mph).

Paul V. Coates – Confidential File, Nov. 12, 1959

The Mirror follows the Lillian Lenorak story. Below, Paul Weeks profiles suspect Tord Ove Zeppen-Field. This Mother Wonders Why Her Son Died     Many eyes -- including those of some U.S. senators in town for public hearings this week -- see the juvenile delinquent.     But somehow, the focus, the image, is never the same.     To the policeman, the juvenile delinquent isn't just a bad boy, or a bad girl.  They are potentially dangerous criminals.  A boy's age -- the fact that he's not yet 18 -- doesn't make him any less dangerous.  Experience has taught the policeman that an immature punk, paired with a loaded gun, is as deadly an enemy as he can face.     Through the eyes of a probation officer, a juvenile delinquent is a kid who's made a mistake, or two, or more.  He's an anti-social, but not beyond redemption.  The probation officer's job is to straighten the kid out and keep him straight.  He's got to see him in a kindly light.      Other people see the juvenile delinquent in other shades of vision.     The judge, the neighbors, the "nice" kid who has to take the long way home from school to avoid being beaten up by a gang, the j.d.'s parents ("He's really a good boy."), the preacher, the rabbi, the father -- each has his own definition.      Today, I'm going to give you another definition -- as applied by a housewife whose concern is a tragic one.     Her name is Mrs. Lembersky.  She live son L.A.'s east side.     On Oct. 17 of this year, her 15-year-old son, Larry, left the house at 6 p.m. to attend a church bazaar seven blocks away.     Mrs. Lembersky, and some other people I've talked with since that day, described Larry as a very popular, real fine kid.      He'd been a Cub Scout, Boy Scout, an honor student at Hollenbeck Junior High, and was, at the same time he walked out the front door that evening, a member of the "B" football squad at Roosevelt High School.     At the bazaar, when he and a friend were playing a dart game, a 14-year-old kid approached them and said that somebody wanted to see them outside.     The "somebody" turned out to be nearly a dozen members of the Little Eastside gang.  One of the gang's members, it turned out, had taken Larry's joking comment about a "squeaky bicycle" (made more than a month before) as a personal insult.     Larry and his friend walked innocently outside.  They were encircled, jumped, slugged, kicked.  As they fought their way through the circle and started to run, Gilbert Roque, 17, plunged a 7-inch knife into Larry's heart and killed him.     "Gilbert Roque killed my son," Mrs. Lembersky told me yesterday.  "He's a murderer.  A cold-blooded murderer."     "But you watch," she said, "He'll be treated like just another juvenile delinquent.  He'll be back on the streets in a year or two."      Gilbert Roque's story reportedly is that he'd been threatened with a shotgun in the face the week before by a rival gang.  He was just a bystander the night he killed Larry Lembersky .  He carried the knife for "self-defense," and when he saw Larry and his friend running toward him, he thought they were after him and he used the knife for "protection."     The dead boy's mother told me: "After my son fell down, his friend rushed back and bent over him.  Then the same boy knifed him in the back."     "Is that self-defense?" she asked.     In panic and pain, Mrs. Lembersky called Gilbert Roque's mother after the killing. Why, Why, Why?     "Why," she demanded, "did your son kill my son?"     Mrs. Lembersky told me: "The boys mother said she didn't know why.  She said that her son was  a good boy."     "He's not a good boy, Mr. Coates," Mrs. Lembersky cried.  "Good boys don't murder people."     Juvenile delinquents.  Juvenile killers.  I hope the senators come up with some answers, but optimistic I'm not.

IWW Official Lynched After Shots Are Fired at Armistice Day Parade

Nov. 12, 1919: An AP dispatch says a mob in Centralia, Wash., hanged an IWW official –originally believed to be Britt Smith and later identified as Wesley Everest – for allegedly being one of the union members who fired on an Armistice Day parade and killed a former serviceman in the resulting riot. Three other men were killed and two more were wounded, the AP said.

Illinois Mob Lynches Two Men

Nov. 12, 1909: A mob in Cairo, Ill., goes on a murderous rampage, lynching a Will “Froggy” James, an African American, and Henry Salzner, who was white. Sheriff Frank Davis tells Illinois Gov. Charles S. Deneen: "The streets are filled with people and they are crazy. They are storming the jail now and are trying to batter down the doors. I called for volunteers to help suppress the rioting and not a soul would help me. I must have troops."

Beating Victim Identified

A Senate subcommittee hears testimony about drug traffic from Mexico. Reading may become a lost art!

Nov. 11, 1959: Here’s a name that may sound familiar to people who follow the Black Dahlia case: Lillian Lenorak. You may recall that Mary Unkefer, a jail matron from Santa Barbara who befriended Elizabeth Short in 1943,  wrote a letter to the district attorney’s office in 1950 about transporting Lenorak from the home of Dr. George Hodel to the psychiatric ward at Santa Barbara General Hospital. Unkefer’s letter is one of the most disturbing items in the district attorney’s files on the Black Dahlia case. I would caution that accounts of Lenorak’s death describe her as extremely volatile and mentally unstable, with a history of stormy romances. Reports of her death say that she was threatening to jump out of a moving car during an argument with Frank Back over why he wouldn’t give her a key to his house. Keep in mind as you read these letters that this lady is not a typical, well-grounded, middle-class suburban housewife but a chronic patient of mental hospitals and adjust your skepticism accordingly.     Note: The above page was too long for my scanner so I had to scan it in two pieces and paste it together    To be sure, this is a vivid account. The question anyone should have is to what degree it's reliable. Sgt. Bill Bentley also wrote a letter to district attorney's investigator Walter Sullivan about Lenorak. Bentley's version isn't nearly as dramatic but perhaps more reliable.

Yet Another Killer Dad in the Black Dahlia Case

The front page of the Los Angeles Examiner, Jan.  25, 1947. The only message ever confirmed to be from the Black Dahlia’s killer.

With the publication of Steve Hodel’s “Black Dahlia Avenger” and “Most Evil,” I assumed that the market for “Daddy did it” claims about the Black Dahlia case was exhausted, particularly after the tragic suicide of Janice Knowlton, who began this bizarre publishing genre with “Daddy Was the Black Dahlia Killer.”   But no. Throw onto the pile of claims about conveniently dead “killer Dads” the one being offered by Dennis Kaufman, a Sacramento man who says his stepfather, Jack Tarrance, (you guessed it) killed Elizabeth Short and committed the Zodiac murders. And yes, there is a movie in the works. Unlike some crime writers, I am a specialist rather than a generalist. The Black Dahlia case is one I know well, but I’m only familiar with the outlines of Zodiac, so I’ll skip anything involving Tarrance and the Zodiac killings. Here’s a brief explanation of what’s wrong with the claim (it’s not even good enough to call a “theory”) linking him to the Black Dahlia case. My information on Tarrance comes from online reporting by Kris Pickel and posted by KOVR, the CBS affiliate in Sacramento.  According to Pickel’s reports, Kaufman and “forensic document examiner Nanette Barto” say that Tarrance’s handwriting matches the Zodiac letters and the mail received in the Black Dahlia case.   The problem with these claims (and it’s the same mistake made by “Black Dahlia Avenger” and “Most Evil”) is that they are based on the wrong assumption that Elizabeth Short’s killer sent a flood of postcards and letters to newspapers. There were no letters from the killer. There were no postcards from the killer. There is no handwriting to compare.  Zero. Let me repeat: The only confirmed message from the killer of Elizabeth Short is the “Here! is Dahlia’s belongings” envelope shown above, which used letters clipped from newspapers. Notice that there’s no handwriting on the envelope. None. All the rest of the mail was the work of anonymous crackpots. The fact is that in the weeks after the killer sent some of Short’s belongings to the newspapers, there was a deluge of mail from pranksters. Every bit of it was a joke. That anyone is taking this mail seriously 60 years later is a sad reflection of the  pitiful lack of skepticism among amateur researchers, writers and book publishers.     The issue of whether Tarrance was the Zodiac killer is one I will leave to somebody else. But here’s the first question I have for the folks claiming he killed the Black Dahlia: “Can you show that Jack Tarrance was in Los Angeles at the time of the murder?” Not, “Could he have been in Los Angeles? “ or “Do you think he was in Los Angeles?”  The next question is: “If you don’t know, what are you doing to find out?” You’ll notice from the KOVR videos that the purported “evidence” is long on the nebulous art of handwriting comparison and very short on facts. All that’s said is that Tarrance was in the Navy and might have been in San Diego in 1945 – two years before the killing – and was discharged a few months after the Black Dahlia murder. In fact, a shot of his discharge papers shows he was in the service until October 1947, nine months after the murder.   It is not impossible to answer the question of where Tarrance was in January 1947 at the time of the Black Dahlia killing – but it’s a fair amount of work. The test will be whether these folks will even attempt to fill in the blanks or content themselves with a lot of mumbo-jumbo about penmanship in hopes of a book/movie deal. Note: The two images of crackpot mail are from the Herald-Express/Herald Examiner photo archives. Some of the Herald’s Black Dahlia material, including these images, is at the Los Angeles Public Library and has been posted online, and many photos are in the John Gilmore archives at UCLA Special Collections. The screen grab of Tarrance’s honorable discharge is from KOVR.

Woman Wants to Buy Airplane

Nov. 5, 1909: Mrs. H.A. Arnold wishes to buy an airplane and hopes to learn how to fly during the winter. She would become the first woman in the world to buy an airplane, The Times says … And an possible lead on the Denver Strangler of 1894.

The ‘Unwritten Law’ on Homicide

Halloween with R.F. Outcault’s Buster Brown.

Oct. 26, 1919: The “unwritten law,” that a husband was justified in killing any man who romanced his wife, appears frequently in The Times and was cited as a defense for decades – often successfully. In fact, the term appears as recently as  1981 in Al Martinez’s profile of legendary Los Angeles attorney Max Solomon, who defended Mickey Cohen, Brenda Allen and Bugsy Siegel.

Doctor Dumped Severed Body Into Creek, Chauffeur Says

Labor activists in Indianapolis set off four precisely timed bombs targeting a contractor using non-union workers. One bomb destroyed a barn at his home, two bombs wrecked buildings under construction and the fourth damaged a building at his plant.

A chauffeur testifies in the trial of Dr. George A. Fritch, accused of killing Maybelle Millman of Ann Arbor, saying that  Fritch threw three heavy sacks into Ecorse Creek.   "Have you been killing someone?" the chauffeur asked. "You are not supposed to know anything," the doctor replied. "Millman's body was found in three sections in sacks in Ecorse Creek and lower Detroit River early last September. The police decided the body showed evidence of a criminal operation," The Times says.