Girl in coma

Posted on May 31, 2007 by lmharnisch

 

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1957_0531_payette_pixMay 31, 1957
Long Beach

Suzanne was supposed to have a simple bit of surgery. Didn’t everyone
get their tonsils out? The 15-year-old went into St. Mary’s Hospital in
Long Beach on May 31, 1956, but during the operation, her heart
stopped. Doctors opened her chest and massaged her heart. But it was
too late. By the time her heart resumed beating, her brain had gone too
long without oxygen and she suffered irreversible damage.

Days passed, and then weeks. The Times wrote about others who had
fallen into comas. There was 12-year-old Herbie Gray of South Pasadena,
who was riding his bicycle and got hit by a truck Nov. 28, 1955, and
Mrs. William Wrigley, who suffered a stroke Dec. 23, 1947, and was kept
alive by what was considered "a medical miracle."

Suzanne’s mother said: "She seems to be trying to tell us something."

Her care was extremely costly and her father, Lyle, a furniture
salesman, used up all the family’s money. "I have borrowed from everyone we
know," he said. "There is nowhere else to turn."

Suzanne’s story touched the hearts of many people in Los Angeles and
across the country. Anonymous benefactors donated money as well as football
tickets for charity raffles. Schoolchildren raised $884 in nickels and
dimes. Her parents brought a $1.5-million lawsuit ($10,747,925.65 USD
2006) against the hospital, the surgeon and the anesthesiologist, but
The Times didn’t cover the outcome of the suit. 

"People have been wonderful, but there’s so far to go to meet the cost
of Suzanne’s bills," said her younger brother, Lyle Jr., 11. 

"Suzanne seems to be making progress," her father said after she had
been in a coma for three months. "Physically, she appears fairly good.
We think she recognizes us when we enter her room. She breaks out in a
sweat and seems to get excited."

But after six months of hospital care, she was no better and her parents brought her home to 2728 Ostrom Ave.,
Long Beach, to be tended by her mother and father.  "At least we can
give her 24-hour care and try to make her comfortable," her mother
said. "We can do no more."

"Our insurance money is used up, our borrowings are gone and donations
from kind people have been used up also," her father said.

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"My wife believes that occasionally Suzanne recognizes her for a
moment," he said. "And at times she seems to have some expression in
her face. She doesn’t talk, but she will make sounds."

On May 31, 1957, the first anniversary of her operation, The Times offered no hope of her recovery.

The Payette family, which also included another daughter, Sally,
apparently moved to Minnesota. Lyle and Isabelle Payette died in 1986.
Judging by online genealogical records, Suzanne spent 20 years in a
coma before dying in 1976.

Herbie Gray died March 3, 1957, without regaining consciousness. Ada
Wrigley died Dec. 16, 1958, at the Wrigley mansion in Pasadena.

However, The Times also wrote about a "miracle man." His name was
Melvin Eugene Hewitt and in 1951, he was revived after hitting his head
on the sidewalk during a brawl outside an El Monte bar. He was
considered dead on arrival at El Monte Medical Center, but two doctors
cut open his chest and massaged his heart. After six weeks in a coma,
Hewitt regained consciousness, although he suffered brain damage.

In 1957, his mother, Mabel Werrett, told The Times: "He is a religious
man and he speaks with conviction. I place a lot of faith in his
words."

She quoted him: "Someday soon, Mom, I will be completely cured and my mind will be as normal as when I had my accident."

Melvin Eugene Hewitt died Dec. 28, 1987, at the age of 63, 36 years after he was given up for dead.

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Killing in Alhambra

Posted on May 30, 2007 by lmharnisch

 

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Photographs by Larry Harnisch Los Angeles Times
22 Champion Place, Alhambra, Calif.

 

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May 30, 1957
Alhambra

Yeah, we’re back in Alhambra, parked on the pinched, narrow street outside 22 Champion Place,
a quirky, old two-story house built in 1910. It used to belong to a
Western artist named Frank Tenney Johnson, who died in 1939.

His wife,
Vinnie, died in  December 1956, and since they had no children, she
left everything to her sister, Evalyn, and her son, James. Evalyn had
been living by herself at the house since 1952, when she divorced her
husband, Clarence, a janitor for the Monrovia school district, and her
sister went into a sanitarium.

Let’s go inside. Keep your hands in your pockets and don’t move
anything. Notice as we head toward the house that there’s a little
building to the side with a basement. I think that was Johnson’s
studio, but that’s just a guess. It could be a garage.

How about that? The front door is unlocked. The house is loaded with Johnson’s paintings–lots and lots of cowboys.

Notice the vacuum cleaner, and a couple of cushions that have been
pulled off the sofa, as if someone was doing housework. There’s a TV
tray upset on a pile of newspapers.

Let’s go upstairs and look in the bedroom.

That’s Evalyn in the bed with the covers pulled up to her chin. Her son will tell the papers that her face is black. She was 67.

Police will find out that she’s entirely dressed except for one shoe.
Her hands are tied tightly behind her back with a piece of wire with
brown plastic insulation.  She’s been strangled with some pink cloth that was apparently torn from a woman’s half-slip. The
medical examiner, Dr. Frederick Newbarr, will find that she was knocked
unconscious first.

 

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Let’s go out into what I’ll call the studio. Norman Rockwell spent a
few weeks working here in 1945. Now it’s full of old junk. The only
thing new is down in the basement: another piece of wire, with yellow
plastic insulation instead of brown, and connectors on either end.

That’s about all we know. Evalyn’s son, James Ash, and daughter-in-law,
Lois, live across the street in a house set way back on the lot. Lois saw her mother-in-law this morning
when Evalyn stepped out of the house to get the newspaper. This
evening, they’re supposed to go to San Gabriel Cemetery and put flowers
on Vinnie’s grave. Apparently they were going to go earlier in the day,
but Evalyn decided to visit the cemetery at night so she could spend
the day at Hollywood Park.

Van Wormer, her ex-husband, says he talked to her on the phone about
once every six weeks. Otherwise he  hadn’t had any contact with her. A
high school kid takes care of the yard, but he was in school when she
was killed.

Evalyn’s slaying has never been solved. She is buried at San Gabriel Cemetery. Maybe we should stop there on the way out.

We better get going. The police will be here any minute.

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Fireball engulfs desert

Posted on May 29, 2007 by lmharnisch

1957_0529_atest

Photograph by the Associated Press
"A furiously boiling ball of fire,
measuring 900 feet from edge to edge, churns with awesome grandeur at the Nevada
atom bomb test site. The blast, which was set off on a 500-foot tower, was
photographed from a distance of 11 miles."

May 29, 1957
Atomic Test Site, Nev.

The Associated Press captured the explosion in well-wrought, anonymous prose. One of 40 reporters and photographers, accompanied by
14 NATO observers and some civil defense workers, the AP writer
described the detonation of the 10-kiloton bomb 500 feet above the
Nevada desert on a steel tower:

"The fireball devoured the the
tower and shot skyward wrapped in an ugly garment of smoke. A
shuddering sound wave rolled off the desert.

"The column of smoke spilled over into the awesome mushroom. And there
it hung, churning and thrashing, until dissipated by gentle wind.

"The wind stretched the mushroom and its trunk into long, narrow clouds
and bore them to the northwest. When a low, gray haze lifted from the
explosion area, test personnel found only stubs of the tower’s legs,
about four feet high, remaining in the ground. Some lower portions of
the tower had fallen onto the sand when the upper section was turned
into atomic dust."

But rather than a poetic description, the thrust of the story was about how safe it
was to explode atomic devices in the atmosphere. The AP writer made a
point of noting that "safety-conscious scientists" had waited for days
until the weather was exactly right for testing an atomic bomb. In
fact, the writer said, this series of tests was the safest since atomic
blasts began at the Nevada test site in 1951.

"As the blast’s 35,000-foot
mushroom cloud broke up, turned pink under the sun’s first rays and
floated lazily away, Test Manager James E. Reeves said:

"The heavy fallout is in the test area. Only light, long-delayed fallout will result in off-site areas."

The writer noted that 31 aircraft immediately entered the test area to
track the cloud. It was all so safe, the writer said. After all, this
10-kiloton explosion, with only half the force of the bombs dropped on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was from "a low-powered member of the United States
nuclear weapon family."

A little detective work shows that Times aviation writer Marvin Miles
had been sent to Nevada to cover the tests, known as Operation
Plumbbob, but excessive winds forced
prolonged delays. Miles filed story after story about how the tests
were postponed and apparently The Times brought him home and decided to
use AP.

Here’s the original press release on the blast, which was code-named "Boltzmann."

Here’s a link to the National Security Archive’s Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments.

Here’s a map of the radioactive cloud’s track across the U.S.

 

1957_0528_plumbbob

Photograph courtesy of Los Alamos National Laboratory

Perfectly safe, folks, this was just a little one.

1957_0530_abomb

Times political cartooning B.C. (Before Conrad) on Memorial Day. 

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Neumann on the Mideast, Part 19

Posted on May 28, 2007 by lmharnisch

Note: In early 1957, The Times sent UCLA professor Robert G. Neumann
on a six-week tour of the Middle East. Neumann, who was later the U.S.
ambassador to Afghanistan and Morocco, wrote these stories upon his
return. His son, Ronald, is U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan.

Part 19, March 31, 1957

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Maid held in murder

Posted on May 28, 2007 by lmharnisch

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1957_0528_mintz_2May 28, 1957
Los Angeles

Former Nazi prisoner 33822 sat at the defense table, her hands clasped
tightly.  Her light blue cotton dress was wilted from the heat and her
dab of lipstick only accented her jail pallor. Police said Laja Minc, who lost a father, stepmother, two sisters and a brother at Auschwitz, was a
thief. Police said Laja Minc, 36, who used the name Linda Mintz, she was a brutal
killer.

She was liberated Feb. 13, 1946, and brought to the U.S. on May 2,
1952, The Times said. There was a brief postwar marriage that resulted
in a son, Alex, who was now 11.

Mintz had worked as a maid in the homes of several Los Angeles families
that felt sorry for her. But she always stole from them and was
eventually fired.

Her latest employer was Thelma Macomber, 42, who lived with her husband, contractor Fred S. Macomber, at 11920 Laurel Hills Road in Studio City. Thelma’s 65-year-old mother, Irene Sampson, also lived in the home with her new husband, Robert M. Sampson, 28.

It was Robert who found Thelma’s body in the bedroom. Her skull was
bashed in and the bed had been set on fire. He tried to revive her, but
she died at North Hollywood Receiving Hospital.

During the investigation, Mintz said that a freelance photographer who
visited the home a week before had gone into the bedroom and argued
with the victim. Upon reading the account in the newspapers, Max
Tatch, 53, contacted police and said he had been to the home the
week before to photograph the exterior but denied any allegations that
he had returned.

At the police station, Mintz positively identified Tatch as having been at
the home and he was arrested. Investigators had trouble verifying
Tatch’s movements on the day of the killing. He had been at a camera
shop earlier in the day but had spent most of the afternoon sorting
negatives at his apartment and could not provide any witnesses.
Polygraph tests were administered to Mintz and Tatch, but the results
were inconclusive.

1957_0528_macomber
Tatch was released and Mintz was charged with homicide after police
chemist Ray Pinker performed a detailed analysis of the badly damaged
push vacuum cleaner taken from the Macomber home. Analysis found fatty
tissue and broken teeth in the appliance and its sharp edges matched
wounds on the body.

A search of Mintz’s room revealed a cache of items stolen from her
employers: silver spoons, kitchenware, bedding, hand-embroidered
doilies, cut-glass stemware, silver trays, jewelry, a fur, sheets, a
Paris gown and spike-heeled shoes.

Mintz insisted that Tatch was the killer, even though Irene Sampson
insisted that Mintz never saw Tatch when he visited the home and
therefore had no idea what he looked like.

At her first trial, she was found not guilty by reason of insanity and
sentenced to a mental hospital. Pronounced sane a few months later, she
was retried, but the jury deadlocked. Rather than undertake a third
trial, the district attorney’s office dropped the homicide charges.

Courtroom spectators applauded as Mintz was released after 22 months in  jail.

In 1960, Laja Minc, a.k.a. Linda Mintz, was arrested for shoplifting
from a grocery store at 1020 S. Crenshaw Blvd.

According to the Social
Security Death Index, Laja Mintz died in August 1981 in Hennepin, Minn.  Social Security records say Laja Mintz was born in 1916, which would have made her 41 at the time of the killing rather than 36. 

Fred S. Macomber died Jan. 7, 2002, in Santa Monica, according to Social Security records. Thelma Macomber is buried at Pierce Brothers Valhalla Memorial Park.

In a letter to The Times, Tatch thanked his friends and clients for their support and newspapers for their fairness while he was  being investigated in the killing.

"I wish to pay tribute to the fine men of the Van Nuys detective department who worked so hard and left no clue unturned to prove conclusively that I was innocent," he wrote.

"Such men as Lt. Ernest Johnston and Detectives Stewart, Kealy, Hoakum and Nelson are a credit to the community and their profession. Any innocent person  who comes before these excellent officers  will receive a square deal  and courteous treatment, providing, of course, he or she is willing to be helpful and co-operative, as I tried my best to be."

 

Max_tatch_photo_2

Photograph by Max Tatch, Los Angeles Times, May 11, 1947 

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Random shot

Posted on May 28, 2007 by lmharnisch

I passed this building on Melrose en route to the "Wrong Door Raid" apartment house.

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Photograph by Larry Harnisch Los Angeles Times

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Countdown to Watts

Posted on May 27, 2007 by lmharnisch

1957_0527_ucla
May 27, 1957
Los Angeles

In eight years, the city will explode in the Watts riots of August 1965 and white Los
Angeles will ask itself what happened.  Look, for instance, at how the
Mirror portrays integration at UCLA, which is held up as a model
program. (Except, for example, hints such as the orientation program for students from Africa and Asia about why they can’t find a place to live in Los Angeles).

But delve into the microfilm, fellow Caucasians, and read the Los
Angeles Sentinel and the California Eagle, two African American
weeklies. Even a brief scan of the black newspapers in 1957 reveals a
boiling cauldron of righteous anger:  Teachers cannot get jobs in many Los
Angeles County school districts because they are African American.
Black employees are laid off from skilled jobs at North American
Aviation and offered new positions–as janitors. Blacks picket local
stores that refuse to hire African Americans.

Worst of all, a subpoena of Police Chief William H. Parker in a series
of police brutality cases brought by the NAACP is ignored in a shameful
conspiracy of silence by the white media. In fact, the lone white
newsman to profile the situation, radio announcer Lew Irwin, is told that
his feature on the matter is being killed because it is "too controversial."

In the summer of 1957, eight years before the Watts riots, the Los
Angeles Sentinel ran a series titled: "Does Los Angeles Have a Negro
Leader?" The short answer was no.

History doesn’t get any uglier than this.

To be continued….

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Boy kills drunk father

Posted on May 27, 2007 by lmharnisch

 

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May 27, 1957
Maywood

Drunk again, Harold L. Johnson, 43, lay passed out on a bed at 3069 Prospect Ave. in Maywood. His wife, Agnes,  38, helped herself to some money in his pocket.

When Johnson came to and began beating his wife, as he often did, she
called police and ran to a nearby motorcycle shop where their
15-year-old son, Lester, worked.

"If he comes back, I’ll have him arrested," Agnes said. "You won’t have
to," Lester replied. "I have a billy club and will take care of things
myself."

Police warned Lester not to attack his father. But when Harold Johnson
returned and resumed beating his wife, Lester retaliated.

"I decided to do it my way," he said, according to the Mirror.
He warned his father not to beat his mother. Then, "I hit him as many times and as hard as I could," he said.

Police found Harold Johnson unconscious with 10 deep cuts in his head.
He was taken to Maywood Hospital but refused to be transferred to
General Hospital, so he was released. His last act was to go to the
Maywood police station and demand that his son be freed.

The next day, the Maywood Fire Department received an emergency call
and arrived at the Johnson house to find Lester trying in vain to
revive his father. He was dead. Lester Johnson, a sophomore at Bell
High School, was taken to the police station and charged with murder.

On June 10 1957, a coroner’s jury found that the death was excusable
homicide. According to Dr. Frederick Newbarr, Harold Johnson died of a
hemorrhage due to the cuts on his head and alcoholism.

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USC rites

Posted on May 26, 2007 by lmharnisch

 

1957_0526_pansy

May 26, 1957
Los Angeles

All right, you sociologists at USC (and you know who you are) let’s aim
our microscopes close to home, shall we, and examine an apparently
forgotten campus rite: the Tri-Delt’s pansy ring.

The rite of the pansy ring was conducted by the Delta Delta Delta
sorority in May to honor young women who were engaged or had recently
gotten married and apparently began in 1923, although The Times failed
to record its birth–or death.

 

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Like many ceremonies, it changed over time, but at its most elaborate,
the pansy ring featured a breakfast on the lawn of the sorority house
and a fashion show of the modern bride’s trousseau from a store such as
Robinson’s (the engaged woman’s sporting wear, evening outfits,
something called "going-away clothes," etc.) culminating in a procession of
young women in bridal gowns. 

There were speeches on the importance of marriage and home, an
increasingly elaborate "mock wedding" with pretend couples, a thrown
bouquet "and a fast getaway in a convertible by the make-believe
newlyweds," The Times said.

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The key moment came when each of the young women stepped through a
six-foot ring of pansies as their names and wedding plans were
announced and a bride from the fashion show tossed a bouquet to them
(white tuberoses and sweet peas, in case you’re planning to revive the
affair).

The most troubling aspect of the pansy ring is the attitude expressed
in the society columns and reminds me of the old (and I hope forgotten)
joke about women going to college to get an "M-R-S."

Here’s a quote from 1927, for example:

"When 14 co-eds from the graduating class at the University
of Southern California stepped through the traditional pansy wreath of
good luck at the annual pansy breakfast yesterday at the Delta Delta
Delta sorority house, the theory that college has its matrimonial
advantages was given considerable confirmation."

If that doesn’t raise some feminist hackles, how about this excerpt
from a 1955 speech by Mrs. Edwarda W. White, counselor of women at
USC who was announcing her own engagement?

"In a brief talk to the girls before the ceremony, Mrs.
White told them they were assuming an exacting, challenging role in
becoming housewives," The Times said.

"It’s one of the most important jobs there is," she said. "For when
there is harmony in the home, there will be order in the world. And
when there is order in the world, there will be peace."

You got that, ladies? The key to peace in the world is having a pot
roast on the table when your husband hits the door. None of this stopping
at Trader Joe’s on the way home to pick something up, either.

Changing times and attitudes seemed to have resulted in the demise of
the pansy ring, which vanished from the pages of The Times in 1968.

ps. I can guess what "going-away clothes" are but if anyone can elaborate on this fashion matter, I’d be pleased to hear from you.

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ABC apologizes

Posted on May 26, 2007 by lmharnisch

Page 1, Los Angeles Times

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Page 6

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Neumann on the Mideast, Part 18

Posted on May 25, 2007 by lmharnisch

Note: In early 1957, The Times sent UCLA professor Robert G. Neumann
on a six-week tour of the Middle East. Neumann, who was later the U.S.
ambassador to Afghanistan and Morocco, wrote these stories upon his
return. His son, Ronald, is U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan.

Part 18, March 29, 1957

1957_0329_neumann

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Network to apologize

Posted on May 25, 2007 by lmharnisch

ABC agrees to make a formal apology for Mickey Cohen’s comments on the "Mike Wallace Interview."

The Mirror, May 25, 1957

Page 1

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Page 2

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Inventing tomorrow

Posted on May 25, 2007 by lmharnisch

 

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May 25-27, 1957
Pasadena

Is it terribly cruel to pick apart a 50-year-old vision of the future?
Must we laugh at the naivete of the 1950s as the work of well-meaning but misguided
idealists?

Let’s gently dissect a plan proposed for the Pasadena of the future. 

In 1956, the Chamber of Commerce assembled a brain trust in drafting a suggestion of what the city might look like in 20 years for the Pasadena 1976
Committee and they got some things right–but when they missed the
mark, they were off by a mile.

The plan was presented by four impressive men: industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss, who created a model city of the future for the 1939 World’s Fair; Caltech President Lee A. DuBridge; Consolidated Electrodynamic Corp. Chairman Philip S.  Fogg; and  Walter S. Young, superintendent of Bullock’s Pasadena, which opened in 1947 as "the store of tomorrow."
1957_0525_futurama

Their underlying premise was sound: Problems of air, water and "a
shaking earth" must be solved before any of the vision can become
reality, DuBridge said. "All are capable of solution."

Recall that the plan was drafted at the height of the Southland’s
terrible problems with air pollution.  "No single factor will so much
impede the development of this community as the continuation of smog,"
DuBridge said. Pure air may be as costly as pure water, "but the price
must be eventually be paid," he said.

What did they get right or mostly right? Let’s take a look:

  • A green belt of recreational parklands running doughnut-shaped around the perimeter of Pasadena.
  • Multiple-story apartment dwellings to house a population which must look upward rather than outward for living space.
  • Futuristic shopping parks with multiple-story garages, footpaths, flowers and pools–plenty of greenery.

And what did they get wrong? Oh, it’s painful:

  • Moving sidewalks.
  • Axial express trains (monorails).
  • Public and private helicopters for transportation.
  • The four-day workweek.
  • A large-screen outdoor TV "so that an audience might once again
    have the excitement of sharing a performance in the pleasant company of
    others."
  • Recreation parks with with museums, libraries, amphitheaters and hi-fi systems.

Yes, the men envisioned parks with piped-in music: "One might allocate
different music to different spots. Listeners could choose between Bach
at one park and Rodgers and Hammerstein at another." Clearly, these men
did not imagine boom boxes and rap music.

Why Pasadena? Because it was a community in transition.

"Pasadena has changed, they agreed, from a city known as a place where
the wealthy come to retire to a city alive with intellectual scientific
pursuit, an incubator of small businesses in modern fields," the Mirror
said.

My favorite part: "A research park, probably in the vicinity of
Caltech, where a ‘climate of thinking’ would attract industrial
research projects–and also bring Pasadena a high-dome type of
citizen." I think I’ll head to California and Lake in my private helicopter and get a vente cinnamon dolce
latte. Yes, I want whipped cream on that.

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Crooked partner

Posted on May 25, 2007 by lmharnisch

 

1957_0525_will

May 25, 1957
Los Angeles

Mohamad Ahmad should have picked a more honest partner for his
liquor business. But maybe it was only after Ahmad died that the man’s true nature became clear.

Ahmad, 55, died in Jerusalem on April 14, 1956, while on a trip to visit his family in Jordan, The Times said.

Partner Michael Alhandy and his brother, Aleck, produced Ahmad’s alleged will, which
they said was notarized at the home of their mother, Mary Alhandy, 2366 S. Cowlin Ave., portraying her as Ahmad’s "partner, companion and wife." 

Ahmad’s relatives contested the will, which gave the majority of
$44,414 ($318,238.91 USD 2006) to the Alhandys’ mother, while
allocating a total of $12,500 to Ahmad’s brother, nephew, stepmother and four
sisters in Jordan. Ahmad’s cousin Yousef also contested the transfer of
$90,000 ($644,875.54 USD 2006) in property to Michael Alhandy’s wife.

The Ahmad family’s attorneys pointed out that a form stapled to the
will hadn’t been printed until six months after it was allegedly signed
and notarized. Then there was the matter of Ahmad not being able to
read or write English and therefore unable to read his purported
will.

The Alhandys said the form in question had been accidentally torn from
the document and a replacement had been typed and signed. But
handwriting experts and John H. Dixon Jr., representing  the firm that
published the legal documents, showed that everything was a fraud.

"This was the craziest of cock-and-bull stories," Judge Newcomb (or
Newcombe) Condee said. "These witnesses were given every opportunity
prior to Mr. Dixon’s testimony to give the explanation but they
persisted at the time in their story that the stapled document
originally notarized had never been removed," The Times said.

California death records show that Michael Alhandy died Dec. 31, 1999, at the age of 75;
Aleck Alhandy died Dec. 14. 1998, at the age of 76; Mary Alhandy died Dec. 18, 1959, at the age of 71.
Condee retired from the Superior Court bench in 1965. He died Feb. 1,
1974, at the age of 75.

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Neumann on the Mideast, Part 17

Posted on May 24, 2007 by lmharnisch

Note: In early 1957, The Times sent UCLA professor Robert G. Neumann
on a six-week tour of the Middle East. Neumann, who was later the U.S.
ambassador to Afghanistan and Morocco, wrote these stories upon his
return. His son, Ronald, is U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan.

Part 17, March 28, 1957

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Paul V. Coates–Confidential File

Posted on May 24, 2007 by lmharnisch

Paul_coatesMay 24, 1957


REVENGE is a kind of wild justice, which the more man’s nature runs to, the more law ought to weed it out–Francis Bacon


Six states out of our 48 have abolished the death penalty.

And California had a chance this week to become the seventh.

But it declined.

By a vote of 31 to 9, our senators rejected a bill which would have closed the gas chamber of San Quentin for six years.

To me, the rejection was a disappointment. A rather big one.

Because I don’t believe the death penalty is a deterrent to crime.

Nor do I believe in laws of revenge.

We are, or should be, too civilized to permit such spiteful legal murder to be a part of our code of justice.

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But what appalled me most was NOT the fact that the bill was defeated.

Sen. James E. Busch (R) of Ukiah, in an emotional frenzy, screamed out
against those 23 men now in San Quentin’s death row as "vermin, rats,
lice and lascivious lizards."

He continued.

"We thought it was all right to drop a bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki where some 90,000 kids and women were killed.

"We did it because it was war.

"Isn’t this war between these rats and society?"

I shudder at such twisted babbling in our state Capitol.

Because in the first place, the 23 men now in Death Row would have had
their punishment changed to life imprisonment with NO possibility of
parole if the bill had passed.

And in the second place, society declares war on no one.

It tries, instead, to protect itself by removing those who threaten it.

And life imprisonment without parole offers us the same protection as does legal murder.

Another enemy of the bill, Sen. Donald L. Grunsky (R) of Watsonville,
charged that the measure’s backers were "innocent victims of a
sob-sister attitude."

"Let’s not use the great state of California as a guinea pig," he said.

Personally, I consider myself an innocent victim of nothing.

And I’m aware that Sen. Grunsky’s remarks came after substantial
evidence was presented to the body that elimination of capital
punishment laws in other states, and in Canada and other countries, had
not caused the crime rate to increase.

In honesty, I was not surprised that the bill failed.

And I was quite pleased with the attention it drew in newspaper, radio and television reports.

Because I’m convinced that the more the public knows about capital
punishment, and the sooner it knows, the sooner it will overwhelmingly
denounce its practice as a hangover from dark, barbaric ages.

Yesterday, the Mirror-News printed the results of a survey conducted by Walter H. Eaton’s Los Angeles Poll.

The question asked was:

Are you in favor of capital punishment?

The results:

In favor: 51%
Opposed: 35%
Undecided: 14%

The vote indicates that I am with the minority. But it’s not the first time.

And I think, and hope, that the next time a poll is taken, we’ll be the
majority. In the past week, capital punishment has been an extremely
controversial issue–and a lot of persons learned much about the real
issue.

Sen. Richard Richards (D) of Los Angeles, spoke Wednesday for the 35% on Eaton’s poll when he declared:

"I have no illusions about the outcome of today’s vote. But as sure as
I’m standing here, the time will come when the Senate will vote for
such a bill as this."

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Child killer

Posted on May 24, 2007 by lmharnisch

 

452_isabella

Photograph by Larry Harnisch Los Angeles Times
Above, 425 Isabella St., Highland Park, May 19, 2007.

1957_0524_butler

1957_0524_pix

May 24, 1957
Los Angeles

His mother’s boyfriend can’t hurt him anymore. Little Donald Butler
Jr., 3, said: "I love you, Mommy," and died of a perforated intestine
after months of beatings that left him bruised from head to foot.

Mommy, was 20-year-old Nancy Butler, 452 1/2 Isabel St.
in Highland Park, the child bride of sailor Donald Butler, who was with
the 6th Fleet in the Mediterranean. While her husband was gone, Nancy
had fallen in love with bus driver Paul H. Benson, 26, a twice-married
ex-Marine.

Benson’s beatings were nonstop, according to court
testimony. There were times when Nancy begged him to beat her instead
of her son. Benson accommodated her and beat her as well, but always
went back to beating young Donald. Why didn’t she leave him? She was in love with him and hoped to marry him, she told police. After all,
they were going to have a baby.

As for the child’s injuries,
which included two cracked ribs, Benson said that the boy had taken a
bad fall on his tricycle and that older boys in the neighborhood were
picking on him.

Although medical examiner Dr. Frederick
Newbarr testified that young Donald must have been in constant pain, he
never complained, Benson and Nancy Butler told police.

"Donald
and I were buddies," Benson told police. "I wasn’t his real father but
he used to wait for me to come home and tell me: ‘Daddy, I love you.’ "
And Benson portrayed himself as a devout Christian. Asked why he
didn’t get medical treatment for the boy, Benson said: "I don’t believe
in doctors because I belong to the church of God."

During the
trial, Neil Benson described pulling a gun on his brother Paul to keep him from
beating an adopted daughter. Among
other things, Paul Benson tied the girl’s hands around her neck with a
towel and forced her to jump off a 6-foot-high shelf in a closet, according to witnesses.

On
Oct. 15, 1957, Paul Benson was convicted of second-degree murder in the
death of Donald Butler Jr. He was sentenced to five years to life in
prison.

"Some of the jurors wept during the testimony," The Times said.

Rest
in peace, Donald Warren Butler, born Nov. 11, 1953, beaten to death May
23, 1957. There is no further record of Donald Butler Sr., Nancy
Kuykendall Butler or Paul H. Benson.

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Slayer commits suicide

Posted on May 23, 2007 by lmharnisch

The Mirror, May 23, 1957, Page 1

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Page 18

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Countdown to Watts

Posted on May 23, 2007 by lmharnisch

1957_0523_population

Note: The Watts riots are eight years away. As far as I can tell, The Times didn’t even cover this story.

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Theresa Zeigler writes:
After I read this story about the influx of
Negroes and Hispanics in L.A. Country,  I was remembering that back when I was a
little girl in Inglewood, that there was a city ordinance that stated Negroes
had to be out of town by sunset if they were working for any families there
doing domestic work.  I can’t recall if they ever worked in the lima bean
fields.  My 4 brothers did though. 

 

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Theft ring raided

Posted on May 23, 2007 by lmharnisch

 

1957_0523_shoplift_hed

May 23, 1957
Los Angeles

1957_0523_shoplift01David Schubin and Barbara Rose Frazier knew all about supply and demand. It was only later that they learned about the law.

Schubin and Frazier set up a small department store in their apartment at 10560 National Blvd.,
offering expensive men’s suits, dresses, coats, appliances, luggage,
more than 300 records "and a number of imported knickknacks for
discriminating shoppers," the Mirror said. The couple also had golf
clubs, liquor and bathing suits, The Times said.

The best part: Everything was 50% off. In fact, to prove that customers
were getting a good deal, Schubin and Frazier left the original tags,
showing how much the items were selling for at the stores where they
had been shoplifted.

Schubin and Frazier were clever. According to police, they offered to
sell the stolen merchandise to buyers for the victimized stores,
allowing a 50% profit.

1957_0523_schubinAnd if customers couldn’t find what they wanted,
Schubin and Frazier would accompany them to a selected department store
and shoplift whatever they desired.

"The couple operated the biggest shoplifting ring in our experience," Sgt. C.W. Nanny said.

Eventually, Schubin and Frazier outsmarted themselves when one of the
store buyers contacted police after being offered some of the stolen
merchandise.

Schubin was apparently a Mickey Cohen operative who had been arrested
in a 1948 gambling raid at a West Hollywood club. He and his wife were
convicted. Manicurist Evelyn V. Gaffera, who was charged with conspiracy in the thefts, was found not guilty.

The appeal of the case is listed here.

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