Nov. 13-14, 1957
Los Angeles
Just as I suspected.
Although The Times was too squeamish to even allude to homosexuality in the Trick or Treat murder of Peter Fabiano, the Mirror was a bit more brave.
A bit.
It’s fairly evident that the Mirror expected people to read between the lines and figure out this story:
“Strange and unpredictable passions were probably responsible for the trick or treat murder of a Sun Valley beauty shop owner on Halloween, police said today.
“This cryptic comment was all that came from Valley Detective Sgts. Pat Kealy and Charles Stewart after they booked a 40-year-old woman freelance photographer on suspicion of murder.”
The Mirror helpfully provides a few more facts about Rabel: She was a Lithuanian immigrant, had a police record for burglary and violating liquor laws, and she had been divorced for a year.
Let the record show that the word “lesbian” appeared only once in a Times news story in 1957 and that was in a direct quote from a prosecution brief against L. Ewing Scott, referring to his fabricated excuses for his wife’s disappearance.
ProQuest shows that the word “lesbian” also appeared twice in classified ads, but I suspect these are “false positives” that sometimes confuse the software’s search engine.
Stay tuned and I’ll go over the ads to see if I can find out what’s up.
But why should I have all the fun? Click below to see two pages of Times classified ads that ProQuest says contain the word “lesbian.”
June 9, 1957
Nov. 3, 1957
ladailymirror.com 
How fascinatingly appalling. Especially the ads like “File clerk Age to 44.” What happened if a woman–excuse me, GIRL–got hired at 43? Did she have to quit the following year? Was she put out to pasture?
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