Los Angeles
Joe (or more like Jane) Citizen of the 700 block of S. New Hampshire Ave. just couldn’t stand the sight of the little blonde girl and her dog asleep in the back seat of that car one more night, so on the third incidence she phoned police. Sure enough, radio officers Clyde Giroux and D.R. Lynch discovered 7-year-old Linda Henderson and her dog Butch snoozing in the back of a car parked in front of number 747.
Asked where she lived, the yawning gamine explained “when the sun comes up my mamma comes and takes me to a café, but I can’t tell you where I live for we’re looking for a place.†But mamma was nowhere to be seen this evening, so officers left a note on the car. Then Butch and Linda were processed at Wilshire Police Station and the child sent along to Juvenile Hall.
A friend told Linda’s mamma what had happened, and Mrs. Louise M. Carringer (nee Henderson, 36, divorced) appeared, explaining that during her search for housing she only occasionally left Linda alone. Dep. City Attorney Perry Thomas responded by sending mamma, charged with child neglect, over to spend the night in the Lincoln Heights Jail.
Of Butch, who apparently made no move to stop the strange men from removing his charge from the vehicle, we know no more.
Gardening was particularly popular among the men, and Jesse Houston, 70, showed off his snapdragons, lilies of the Nile and hollyhocks, as well as his orchard of peaches and nectarines. Houston, Hillinger noted, had been the facility’s shuffleboard champion for three years.
Gardening and shuffleboard were the last things on Houston’s mind on June 16, 1947, however, when he was shot in the head during a gunfight with police after he and two other men took $2,500 in cash ($23,660.46 USD 2005) during a robbery of Citizens National Trust and Savings at 769 S. Vermont Ave. One of the robbers struck bank client J. Liberman with a pistol when he refused to drop his safe deposit box into a shopping bag the men were using to carry the stolen money.
A Wilshire Division patrol car and a motorcycle officer chased the robbers , who shot it out after their sedan sideswiped another vehicle and jumped the curb on 8th Street near Normandie. Motor Officer Robert C. Maier was struck in the right leg and Officer R.H. Simmons was wounded in the left leg while his partner D.G. McMullen was uninjured. At least 15 shots were fired.
The officers received commendations from Police Chief Clemence Horrall, and whatever became of Houston’s partners, Fred Anthony, 23, who was shot in the right leg, and Emmett Fuller, 21, who was uninjured, they never reappeared in print.
As for Houston, whose holdup record apparently dated to 1913, he told Hillinger: “Spring is the prettiest time of year. The fruit trees are in blossom, all the different colors of the flowers. The Santa Lucia Mountains are like green carpets of velvet.â€Â
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