Jan. 24, 1959: One of the best parts of doing the blog at latimes.com was having UCLA and Cal State Northridge interns who, among other tasks, transcribed the Paul Coates and Matt Weinstock columns. Sometimes I transcribed them myself (this in addition to my full-time job at The Times). Still other times, I just ran a scan of the columns in the belief that the news value outweighed the funky presentation.

And in this case, it is. Coates has a followup on the shooting of Carl ‘Alfalfa’ Switzer, who was killed in a fight over a $50 reward for a lost dog. The dispute was between Switzer’s parents, who wanted to claim the body, and Switzer’s ex-wife, Dian, who had the rights to Switzer’s body under California law.

This column originally appeared in the L.A. Mirror in 1959 and was republished on latimes.com in 2009. It is available via Archive.org.