Voices–James Ellroy

Posted on June 22, 2008 by lmharnisch

 
Aug. 30, 1995



By Amy Wallace

Times Staff Writer


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n his 1987 crime novel, "The Black Dahlia," James Ellroy had the
audacity–what he would call the "righteous authorial authority"–to
cook up a solution to Los Angeles’ most famous unsolved homicide.



Leading his readers on a tour of the City of Angels’ seediest streets,
Ellroy wrote of a young homicide dick who became obsessed with the
Dahlia–a would-be actress named Elizabeth Short who in 1947 was found
slain and severed in two. In fiction, Ellroy did what no real detective
has ever done: He made the Dahlia’s killer pay.



Now, Ellroy has set out to solve another decades-old Los Angeles-area
killing. Fresh from a promotional tour for his acclaimed 11th novel,
"American Tabloid" (Knopf, 1995), he has begun researching a book about
the mysterious 1958 murder of Geneva Hilliker Ellroy, his own mother.



Crime literature may never be the same.



After all, this is the murder that Ellroy says made him the man he is
today. The 47-year-old author traces his fascination with all things
criminal back to the day his mother was found, strangled and half-nude,
near Arroyo High School in El Monte. And he admits that over the years
he has used her death to stir up interest in his novels.



"I’ve exploited it," he says flatly, recalling how a previous
publisher, eager to promote "The Black Dahlia," encouraged him to tell
interviewers about his past. "He said, ‘If you’re willing to talk about
this on the media circuit, we can put you out there and sell some
books.’ And he was right. I told the story 9 million times."


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self-described "master self-promoter with a tight grip on a pop-psych
show-and-tell," Ellroy used to tell reporters that his mother–a
divorced alcoholic who could sometimes be harsh to her son–got
"whacked." More than once, he referred to her slaying, which occurred
when he was 10 years old, as "the Geneva snuff."



But today his tone is fervent, not flip. Thirty-seven years since he
lost her, he is trying to find his mother again, to recognize the woman
who gave him voice.



"To one degree or another I’ve exploited her or ignored her. I’ve
understood that for a long time. But now, I know the true force that
this woman and her death has had on me," he says, explaining that by
investigating her murder, he hopes also to understand more about her
life. "This is an attempt to go back, to portray the woman with love
and, if possible, bring her killer to justice."






Dropcap_s_witness o it is that Ellroy, whose raw, tautly written but very dark books
have won him both a faithful following and a coterie of critics, has
arrived in an uncharacteristically soft-spoken place. This is a man who
made a career out of chronicling the lives of burned-out cops, has-been
or never-was stool pigeons, two-bit snitches and three-time losers.
This is a man who can–and does–use the words milieu and Zeitgeist in
a single sentence, a 6-foot-3-inch espresso addict who manages to
appear brooding even when wearing loud Reyn Spooner Hawaiian shirts
(his favorite apparel).



This is no mama’s boy. On the contrary, Ellroy says he hated his mother when she died.



"On my 10th birthday in March, 1958, she said, ‘Now you’re a young man.
You can decide if you want to live with your dad or live with me,’ " he
recalls. When he chose his father, "she whacked me in the face. I had
made up my mind that was the last time she was going to do that and, of
course, it was. . . . The next thing I know, she’s dead."



Ellroy’s decision to reopen the investigation of his mother’s slaying
came after a newspaper reporter-friend discovered Geneva Ellroy’s
murder file while researching a story about unsolved San Gabriel Valley
homicides. Ellroy had never thought to track down the file himself, but
once he learned it was there, he couldn’t get it out of his head.



If nothing else, he knew, it would make a great story: a grown man
confronting a gruesome incident from his childhood, a hardened crime
novelist coming face to face with the most personal of crimes. He
arranged to write a piece for GQ magazine about reading the murder
file–a collection of police reports, mug shots and coroner’s data–for
the first time. The article, called "My Mother’s Killer," was a
finalist for a National Magazine Award. But it didn’t give Ellroy the
peace he’d hoped for.



"I thought the pictures would wound me," he wrote in GQ. "I thought
they would grant my old nightmare form. I thought I could touch the
literal horror and somehow commute my life sentence. I was mistaken.
The woman refused to grant me a reprieve."







Dropcap_s_witness_2 o, he resolved to go further, to expand the article into a book, to be titled "My Dark Places."



Embarking on a real homicide investigation was a daunting task, even
for someone who’d written about so many fictional ones. Ellroy hired a
detective he’d met when he first viewed the murder file, Sgt. Bill
Stoner, who was retiring after 32 years with the Los Angeles County
Sheriff’s Department and was looking for a new challenge.



Stoner, a reserved man with a neat mustache and a modest manner, was
the first to tell Ellroy that they were unlikely to solve the case. The
killer’s trail was ice cold. So many years had elapsed that many of the
key players–and perhaps the killer himself–were dead. Others would be
hard-pressed to remember details of that hot June night in 1958 when
Geneva Ellroy lost her life.



But this unusual partnership–Ellroy in his white Jack Purcell
sneakers, Stoner in his wine-colored loafers–had one thing in its
favor. Stoner knew from experience that on rare occasions the passing
of years can unlock secrets: previously reluctant witnesses want to
unburden their consciences before they die.



Today, Ellroy and Stoner have a particular person in mind who they hope
will come forward, a woman they call simply the Blonde. It is only a
matter of reaching her, they believe, to let her know they need her
help.






Dropcap_g_witness eneva Ellroy dressed pretty on the night she died. Her sleeveless blue
and black dress was set off nicely by a blue-lined, full-length coat.
She wore faux pearls–a simple necklace complemented by a huge ring on
her left hand. It was a Saturday, her son was staying with his father,
and she was going out.



She arrived at the Desert Inn, a bar on East Valley Boulevard in El
Monte, about 8 o’clock. Several people remember that she was joined by
a woman and a man. The man was 40ish, white, swarthy and about six feet
tall. The woman was younger and described as "hard-faced." She wore a
brown summer dress and tied her blond hair back in a ponytail.



The Swarthy Man and Geneva Ellroy left the Desert Inn about 10 p.m.
Twenty minutes later they pulled a dark green Oldsmobile into a nearby
drive-in, Stan’s, and ordered a snack. The carhop remembers that they
talked vivaciously and seemed to have been drinking. By 11 p.m., they
were gone, but three hours later, they drove in again.



Geneva Ellroy ordered chili. She was chatting gaily, but her clothes
looked disheveled, and the carhop speculated she and her companion had
been necking. The Swarthy Man, meanwhile, looked sullen. He ordered
coffee and acted bored with the woman at his side.



The couple left at 2:45 a.m. Eight hours later, Geneva Ellroy was found
dead. One of her stockings was tied around her neck. Her broken
necklace lay under her body, and 47 pearls were found scattered nearby.


Dropcap_w_witness hen interviewed by police, patrons of the Desert Inn said that the
Blonde and the Swarthy Man were not regulars. One hard-drinking
customer said the Swarthy Man had given his name, but he couldn’t
remember it. An artist made a sketch of the Swarthy Man, which was
circulated to newspapers and law enforcement around Los Angeles County.



But police came up empty, lacking leads and suspects.



Today, the Desert Inn is a Mexican restaurant called Valenzuela’s.
Stan’s Drive-In was demolished long ago. But the mystery remains, and
Ellroy and Stoner say the Blonde is their best hope for solving it.
They talk about her frequently, speculating about why she has remained
silent.



"The Blonde is the key," Stoner tells Ellroy. "Was she a girlfriend of
your mother’s? Of the suspect’s? Maybe she’s married to the suspect."



Ellroy picks up where Stoner leaves off. Maybe the Blonde was married
to someone else who was criminally connected to the Swarthy Man. Maybe
she feared reprisals. But surely, he says, surely she has told someone
what she knows.



"She’s a barfly. A juicer," says Ellroy. "These people shoot their mouths off."



Stoner concurs. "She’s told somebody–maybe a bar acquaintance–about
her girlfriend who was murdered, about how she was lucky it wasn’t her.
All we have to do is hit the right person."



If and when they do, they’ve made it easy for that person to get in
touch. Ellroy has a toll-free tip line, which he repeats to anyone who
will listen: (800) XXX-XXX–[Number deleted because this is a 1995 story–lrh].







Dropcap_s_witnesstoner and Ellroy have had some disappointments. One of the original
investigating officers is dead and the other can’t remember much.
They’ve found the carhop, whose memory is flawless, but she admitted
she never was quite sure about the type of car the Swarthy Man drove.



They’ve talked to Geneva Ellroy’s landlady. She cried when she saw
James, and provided him with some details about his mother he didn’t
remember. She used to like to make popcorn, for example, and eat it
with a spoon. But the landlady was no help when it came to identifying
the Swarthy Man and the Blonde.



Ellroy and Stoner are working under a publisher’s deadline: The book
must be written by mid-1996. If they don’t get their man by then,
Ellroy will write about the search, about his fierce friendship with
Stoner, about his mother’s life and his own. In some ways, he muses,
such an outcome would be fittingly ironic.



"It [would be] Geneva Hilliker Ellroy’s last laugh," he says, slipping
briefly into her voice as he imagines what she’d say. "Jimmy, you
exploited me and now . . . you’ve gotten three weeks on the New York
Times bestseller list. You would have gotten 83 [weeks] if you’d found
the killer before the hardcover was published!"



But Ellroy says his search will continue until the killer is caught. And if that day comes after deadline?



"Then [my publisher] is going to say, ‘Come here,’ " Ellroy says,
beckoning with a long finger. " ‘Come here and write an addendum for
the paperback edition.’ "
   
   
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Geneva Ellroy, RIP

Posted on June 22, 2008 by lmharnisch

Geneva Ellroy crime scene, Arroyo High School, El Monte, Calif., via Google maps street view.






o much has already been written about the June 1958 murder of Geneva Hilliker Ellroy; there’s very little I can add to what my friend James Ellroy, above, hasn’t already said in interviews, first-person articles or in his 1996 book, “My Dark Places.”Most of the locations still exist. The businesses have changed along Santa Anita Avenue, but Arroyo High School is much the same. The last time I checked, there was still a restaurant at 11721 Valley Blvd., where her car was found after the killing.

Regular Daily Mirror readers will recall a series of strangulations in 1957, but I haven’t come across any in 1958 until now. The only prominent serial killer at large at the moment is Harvey Glatman, who has killed Judith Dull and Shirley Ann Bridgeford and will claim his next victim in July.


Photo from findagrave.com

Geneva Hilliker Ellroy is buried in Inglewood Park Cemetery. Her grave is next to the chain-link fence along Avenue of the Champions. When you are at her grave you will be near an intersection with a stoplight almost directly across the street from a clinic. (Findagrave.com has the exact number if you want to save yourself the time of looking for it).

Here’s a noir twist for you: Most of the sections of Inglewood Park Cemetery are named for flowers. Geneva Ellroy is buried in the section west of the one named “Dahlia.”

Really.

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June 22, 1938

Posted on June 22, 2008 by lmharnisch

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Found on EBay

Posted on June 21, 2008 by lmharnisch
Why if it isn’t another another envelope sent to our old friend Prof. A. Victor “How to Have Beautiful Hair,”  “How to Be Happy Though Married” Segno. Alas, the money that was in this envelope was spent long ago. The envelope is being sold on EBay.   Hey wait! This envelope was already offered for sale in January!

An artist’s conception of Prof. A. Victor Segno transmitting a “success wave.”
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June 21, 1938

Posted on June 21, 2008 by lmharnisch

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Dropcap_o_1934 ne thing you have to say about Los Angeles Mayor Frank Shaw: He has a sense of humor.

Upon returning from Washington, where he spent the final days of the Earle Kynette trial, Shaw was given a list of written questions.

He was asked for "any comment he cared to make on the conviction of Acting Police Capt. Earle Kynette and Lt. Roy Allen; his position in reference to a resolution by Councilman Hyde asking the mayor, the chief of police and the Police Commission to resign; whether he intended to ask for a reorganization of the Police Department, particularly as to the intelligence squad; an investigation of the squad; will his brother, Joe Shaw, remain with the administration; the $90,000 secret service fund; Dist. Atty Fitts’ announcement that he is going after the ‘higher-ups’ in the Raymond bombing case; and other items."

Shaw said, in part: "Out of 18,000 city employees, three have been charged with crime and two of them have been found guilty. As a public official, sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States and the charter of the city of Los Angeles, I was required to regard these men with the same presumption of innocence as the law grants to every other citizen….

"Councilman Hyde’s resolution calling for resignation of myself, the police commissioners and Chief Davis was clearly the gesture of a candidate for office who must use sensational means to get his name before the voters. The City Council refused to take it seriously. Upon the face of it, it is ridiculous."

Note: On Sept. 16, 1938, it won’t be so funny.

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June 21, 1908

Posted on June 21, 2008 by lmharnisch

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epublican William Taft gets the news that he has been nominated as the party’s presidential candidate. This sequence of photos must have seemed revolutionary for 1908. (And yes, this photo reminds me of one of my all-time favorite headlines: "Says Bad Words Into Phone"). 

Also note the story about fighting in Mexico between Yaqui Indians and U.S. and Mexican troops. Read about Yaqui Easter ceremonies here.

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June 21, 1908

Posted on June 21, 2008 by lmharnisch


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 Dropcap_i_vadis_3 nteresting things from The Times Real Estate Section: The changing face of downtown Los Angeles (shout-out to my pals at onbunkerhill.org) and a proposed luxury hotel for Hollywood that I don't believe was built.

This postcard at left gives a better view of the observation tower and Angels Flight shown above in the 1908 photo of Bunker Hill. The building just to the left of the tower is the Crocker Mansion, which was demolished in 1908.

As for the hotel, it was the brainchild of Albert H. Beach, a promoter and developer who also had the notion of building a huge cotton mill in Los Angeles in 1909.  According to his 1936 obituary, Beach, 74, was a Canadian who came to Los Angeles in 1881 and was a playwright before he became a real estate developer. Hollywood's Beachwood Park was one of the 150 subdivisions he handled, The Times said.

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June 19, 1958: Scientist disappears

Posted on June 20, 2008 by lmharnisch

June 19, 1958: Missing L.A. Scientist Found After 6 Years

July 7, 1954: Albert Clark ReedAlbert and Alfred… Before and after… Lost and found… Found but still missing … still haunted by something and still walking in a dream. 

I pulled the photos of Albert and Alfred from their old-fashioned paper envelope, slightly tattered and crumbling–the kind The Times used before the library switched to manila folders.

Albert is just another middle-aged man in a coat and tie. He’s losing his hair and has a thin mustache, with a pleasant half-smile that looks like he was being coached by some portrait photographer. Albert Clark Reed, 45, looks like any other husband and father from the 1950s. His wife called him a “cool, levelheaded scientist and test pilot.”

He graduated from Caltech in 1929 and returned for more studies in 1932. During World War II, he was a flier and worked on classified military projects, The Times says. Continue reading →

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Dodgers show patience

Posted on June 20, 2008 by lmharnisch

 
June 20, 1958

By Keith Thursby

Times staff writer

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Dropcap_s_1941 ometimes it’s best to do nothing.

Baseball teams fire managers
all the time but Dodger owner Walter O’Malley publicly defended his
manager, Walter Alston, despite the team’s last-place standing. "We
can’t blame Alston for what has happened," O’Malley told the Associated
Press in a story carried by The Times. "The move to the coast, the
makeshift ballpark, the uncertainty of the [Chavez Ravine] election,
these things created an emotional turmoil that affected everybody."

The story was datelined
Brooklyn because O’Malley was in town for business and a checkup,
according to previous stories in The Times. Must have been strange to
be talking baseball in the town that a year ago was the Dodgers’ home.

O’Malley’s patience with Alston
certainly paid off. Alston led the Dodgers back to the World Series in
1959 and he won two more titles in 1963 and ’65. The Dodgers won seven
National League titles during Alston’s years.

"If I could purchase a policy
of insurance for the next 10 years that would guarantee us we’d be
within 8 1/2 games of first place by July 4, I’d buy that policy,"
O’Malley said. "And I’d be willing to wager that we’d win more pennants
than we’d lose."

keith.thursby@latimes.com


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June 20, 1938

Posted on June 20, 2008 by lmharnisch
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609 E. 2nd St. in 1938, above, and the neighborhood via Google street view, below.
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1938_0620_nation At left, thugs vandalizing Jewish businesses in Berlin observe a day of rest.

Above, D.W. Griffith’s "Birth of a Nation" at the Criterion, 7th and Grand. Yes, that’s a Klansman, for those who have never seen the movie.

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June 20, 1908

Posted on June 20, 2008 by lmharnisch
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June 19, 1938

Posted on June 19, 2008 by lmharnisch
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Dropcap_g_1935 ermany begins the systematic roundup of Jews on the pretext of putting them in "protective custody" or claiming that they are foreigners "without proper papers."

"At Buchenwald Concentration Camp, near Weimar, it was reported that 65 army buses were arriving nightly from Berlin, filled with Jews," The Times says. "Other centers sent smaller contingents."

… In the case of two youngsters who are Jehovah’s Witnesses, a federal judge rules that it is unconstitutional to force students to salute the American flag if that violates their religious beliefs.

On the jump, a brief follow on the conviction of Earle Kynette in the Harry Raymond bombing … The American Medical Assn. is divided over a campaign to treat the needy. Dr. Hugh Cabot is calling for the government to pay for preventive medicine, healthcare for the poor and scientific research for the good of the people as a whole, The Times says. The AMA concedes the need to treat the poor, but balks at anything that resembles socialized medicine, The Times says … A woman says she left her 10-week-old baby in a cafe because she wanted to go to a dance. She says she has three other children, two of whom have been adopted while the other is being cared for by a friend.

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June 19, 1908

Posted on June 19, 2008 by lmharnisch
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Dropcap_n_1932 o surprise as to the Republican presidential nominee: William H. Taft. But selecting a running mate is far more difficult. According to The Times, Taft was going to leave the selection up to the GOP delegates rather than choose one himself.

There’s lots below for the 1908 political junkie:
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June 18, 1958

Posted on June 18, 2008 by lmharnisch


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Dropcap_t_1927
wenty years after Ed Ainsworth’s series
on Los Angeles’ congested streets, The Times takes another look at
traffic. I (almost) never grow tired of saying that the incredible
number of transportation studies performed in Los Angeles would fill a
library.

Above, Ozzie Virgil makes his debut with the Tigers.
He was traded to the Kansas City Athletics in 1961, and after coaching
under Clyde King in Phoenix, joined manager King at the San Francisco
Giants in 1968.

Below, Superior Court Judge Stanley Mosk calls
for the creation of a crime commission … Times Education Editor Dick
Turpin joins a contingent of Stanford students to establish a campus in
Germany. The Stanford in Germany program will continue until 1976
… Actor Eddie Albert and his wife, Margo, greet 4-year-old Maria,
whom they have adopted from Spain … Rhonda Fleming and Dr. Lewis
Morrill are splitsville …

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June 18, 1938

Posted on June 18, 2008 by lmharnisch

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Dropcap_f_1928_2
irst, we have tragic news from Berlin: Panicked Jews wander the streets in hopes of avoiding mass arrests in which entire families are hauled away in the middle of the night.

"…officials explained that the anti-Jewish activities were necessary because ‘the Jews’ behavior lately has become provocative, resulting in growing indignation among the population,’ " The Times says.

The Times leads with a story about repercussions of Earle Kynette’s conviction in the Harry Raymond bombing. The most significant story is on the jump: Councilman Hyde introduces a resolution calling for the resignations of Mayor Frank Shaw, Police Chief James Davis and the entire Police Commission. The resolution was sent to a committee, where it was expected to lie dormant. But by the end of the year, a recall election will have changed the landscape.

Also note Betty Rowland, the "Ball of Fire," at the Follies.



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Dropcap_t_1928
he Times concludes its series on traffic in Los Angeles with a call to action: "Are the beaches and the sea to be separated by impenetrable masses of congested cars? Is mankind to stagnate in Southern California, fettered by its own lethargy when a means of release is offered? Those are the questions that must be answered either willingly or unwillingly. They cannot be escaped."

"…The monster of Frankenstein–the motorcar which has wrestled free from its master–must be made a willing and useful slave again!"

To emphasize his point, Ainsworth cites some figures from the Auto Club: Going from 1st to 10th on Broadway took 14 minutes, 12 seconds by auto and 12 minutes, 2 seconds by streetcar. The Auto Club re-created a horse and buggy trip that took 10 minutes, 21 seconds.

Ainsworth also talks about funding the freeways, a subject that I will leave to interested readers.

And yes, the contrast between the Holocaust in Germany and Southern Californians worrying about traffic is pretty stark, isn’t it?

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Republican National Convention

Posted on June 18, 2008 by lmharnisch

 
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June 17, 1958

Posted on June 17, 2008 by lmharnisch

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 Dropcap_h_1925 ere’s a crime-filled page: Narcotics traffic is responsible for much of the lawbreaking in L.A. (blame those lenient judges, says Police Chief William Parker), a plot to kidnap Bing Crosby’s wife and an insurance scheme in which someone intentionally gets some bones broken before staging a car accident. This scam still turns up in Los Angeles from time to time, but now the fraud ring uses several cars to "box in" a victim on the freeway.

Also: Gene Sherman takes a look at Disneyland, three years after it opened.

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June 17, 1938

Posted on June 17, 2008 by lmharnisch

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Photograph by the Los Angeles Times

Police Capt. Earle Kynette, after initially refusing to be interviewed after his conviction in
the Harry Raymond bombing, meets with the press. (Howard Decker writes of the flashbulbs the photographers are using: "Methinks them suckers put out a whole lot of light. Stop down
your apertures, guys!")

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Photograph by the Los Angeles Times

Bombing victim Harry Raymond in a photo published June 17, 1938
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Above left, Auto Club Chief Engineer Ernest East, sometimes called the father of the freeway, and Assistant Engineer Harold Holley.
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os Angeles Police Capt. Earle Kynette is convicted in the Harry Raymond bombing. No surprise, except perhaps to Kynette, who spent the next 10 years in custody.

Officer Fred A. Browne, who was cleared in the case, died of a heart attack the next year in a Vermont Avenue bowling alley. Former Officer Roy J. Allen died of heart problems in San Quentin in 1942.

Kynette was paroled in 1948 despite Raymond’s protests. His wife had divorced him while he was in prison. He was sent back to San Quentin in 1951 for violating his parole after he was convicted of being drunk. He was freed again in 1952. His pharmacist’s license was restored and he was working in a drugstore in Twain Harte, Calif.,  when he was charged with drunk driving in a car accident that killed two people. He was later cleared.

In 1963, Kynette was stabbed in the abdomen and left arm during a drunken fight in a skid row hotel in Oakland. The Times failed to note his death in June 1970 in West Hollywood.

Raymond died in 1957.   

For me, the most surprising discovery in the Raymond case is The Times editorial, below. As far as the unsigned editorial is concerned, Kynette was a rogue officer in charge of a rogue department. The rest of the Police Department–and City Hall, presumably–was free of corruption.

Below left, the next installment of Ed Ainsworth’s series on traffic in Los Angeles.

Listen to some of the predictions if the "motorway" system is built:

Los Angeles to Santa Monica in 15 minutes. Pasadena to Inglewood in 19 1/2 minutes.  Los Angeles to Long Beach in 21 minutes.

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June 17, 1908: Los Angeles’ First Taxi

Posted on June 17, 2008 by lmharnisch

February 14, 1909: A woman in a long dress gets into an old-fashioned horseless carriage taxicab as a man holds the door for her.

Alas, I can’t find any photos of the original Thomas taxicabs that debuted in Los Angeles in 1908. The Western Motor Car Co. put this Chalmers-Detroit into service in Los Angeles in 1909. Continue reading →

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Republican National Convention

Posted on June 17, 2008 by lmharnisch

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