Month: June 2005

June 10, 1947
Los Angeles

Superior Court Judge Charles W. Fricke today denied confessed killer Gerald Snow Welch, 19, his fondest wish, and sentenced him to life in prison for the April 19 killing of Delores Fewkes, a student at Montebello High School who family members say had broken up with Welch repeatedly due to his peculiar philosophy, Further, she did not believe in suicide.

According to the depressive Welch, Fewkes said she couldn’t live without him; they had attempted suicide together on two occasions prior to their April assignation at the Horse Flats picnic grounds in Angeles National Forest. She broke a date with another boy to join Welch, who told her he had a surprise for her. “This is the time,” he said. “It’s all right with me,” she supposedly replied. So he waited until morning, when it was warmer and his hands stopped shaking, and botched the murder-suicide, later carrying the girl’s body down the mountain to police.

After the verdict, which he described as a “dirty trick,” Welch told the court that he would promptly rectify its failure to sentence him to death by killing himself, so he and Dolores could be happy together.

June 9, 1947
Beverly Hills

Stephen Hero, former concert violinist and one-time protege of renowned Spanish pianist Jose Iturbi has confessed to “abduct[ing]” his daughters, Iturbi’s grandchildren, and taking them to New York, where his parents live.

Mr. Hero, Maria Theresa, 10, and Maria Antonia, 9, had been living at Mr. Iturbi’s Beverly Hills estate at 913 N. Bedford Drive since their mother Maria shot herself at the home on April 16 of last year. Her father heard the fatal shot while he was practising and discovered his daughter in her room, mortally wounded, her hair in flames from the exploding shell.

Maria was estranged from her husband at the time of her death, and her father had supported the children since their parents’ 1940 out-of-court separation agreement. In 1941 Maria was granted custody, on grounds of non-support from Hero.

In March 1943, Iturbi entered Superior Court seeking custody of his granddaughters, making unspecified claims that his daughter was unfit to raise them. Before going to court, Mrs. Hero took a job in a drugstore and moved the girls out of her father’s house at 707 N. Hillcrest Drive.

In court, father and daughter appeared so chummy that Judge Edward R. Brand suggested they settle their differences out of court, for the sake of the children and to avoid airing the family’s dirty linen publically, but through their attorneys Jerry Giesler (his) and Roger Marchetti (hers), they initially declined the suggestion,

However, following Mrs. Hero’s dramatic collapse in chambers, an out of court settlement was reached which left their mother with custody, provided mother and daughters live in the Iturbi home, the children have no evening visitors, no family members be employed as domestics or live in the home, and their mother may take the children out any Sunday, providing their nurse received advance notice.

Back in New York, Mr. Hero says that Iturbi was so jealous of the girls’ attention that he refused to permit them to show any affection to their father, and further that he lived in fear of physical assault while while chez Iturbi. So when Iturbi departed for Paris to begin a European concert tour, Hero gave the servants the day off, booked a transcontinental flight under the name Frank Swartz and bundled both Marias aboard. Yes, Hero told reporters, their grandfather could give the girls material things, but not the affection that their natural father could give them.

Iturbi’s lawyer, William V. O’Connor, scoffed at Hero’s claims, and stated that a custody battle would commence once his client returned from his tour on the 20th, or possibly sooner.

June 8, 1947
Corner of Bixel & 7th Streets, Los Angeles

Nice girls know the difference between a tavern and an automobile. So when Mrs. Deloris Keefer, 24, of 725 S. Bixel Street was propositioned by a fella who suggested she stop waiting for her hubby and hop into his car for a little tipple, she said nope.

The would-be barkeep was insistent, though, and grabbed and choked the lady. This so irked Deloris that she slipped off one shapely pump (a dainty size 5 ½, for those keeping score) and laid into to the stinker. He grabbed the shoe away from her, in the process dropping some identifying papers. There was no way Deloris was letting a perfectly good shoe run off with a masher, so she snatched it away as the befuddled fink took a motorized powder.

Police used the ID to track down Samuel J. Blight, 22, of 122 43rd Street, Manhattan Beach, and his pal Raymond M. Johnson, 20, of 6121 Citrus Avenue, both of whom are sitting in County Jail on suspicion of attempted kidnapping. Deloris Keefer remained shod at press time.

One of the greatest independent bookstores in the country is the ginormous Powell’s in Portland. They have an excellent online shop where you can find rare and out-of-print titles as well as commonly available books. If you’re interested in the subjects raised by this blog, you may wish to visit our custom shelf at Powell’s online, where you can browse recommended reading selected by the editors of 1947project, including Kim Cooper’s anthologies Lost in the Grooves and Bubblegum Music Is The Naked Truth. They even have Nathan’s hard to find Los Angeles Neon book, which is a must for the fashionable coffee table.

June 7, 1947
San Luis Obispo

From his trailer coach home near the campus of Cal Poly, where he is a student, William Leon Bruce–during wartime a Sgt. and resident of a Japanese prison camp-described his shock when he came face to face with Tomoya Kawakita, a functionary in the Oeyama camp, in a department store on South Boyle Avenue in Los Angeles seven months ago.

Bruce froze and stared at his former captor, who was strolling with two teenage Japanese girls. When Bruce moved to go after Kawakita, his wife Jean, 22, held him back and insisted he instead call the FBI. Bruce admitted Jean’s advice was sound, as he didn’t know what he might have done to Kawakita had he gotten his hands on him. Bruce carries the rage of one who suffered sinus injuries and a broken jaw from shrapnel on Corregidor, was carried by his buddies on the Bataan Death March and then spent three years in Oeyama, where Kawakita was the first official he encountered. Kawakita had reacted violently to Bruce’s patriotic tattoos, attempting to twist them off of his captive’s arm while screaming about “’crazy Americans and their symbols of freedom.’”

So rather than roughing up his one-time nemesis, Bruce tailed him as far as his car, and turned the license number and his captor’s name over to the F.B.I. When the name and number matched up, the Feds moved in.

Kawakita, a 26-year-old American residing at 220 S. Hicks St., is under arrest on charges of treason in Los Angeles. He went to Japan with his father before hostilities began, supposedly to resume his studies at Meiji University, Tokyo, and returned to Los Angeles after claiming he had not helped Japan during the war. If found guilty, he faces the death penalty. So far in court he has been answering direct questions about his war experience by claiming not to remember the answers.

According to the U.S. Attorney’s office, there are nearly 100 ex-G.I.s prepared to testify to Kawakita’s sadism, his skill at judo, his camp nickname of “Meatball” (obtained because he grew fat on rations denied prisoners) and his sneering opinion that “I knew you Americans couldn’t take it when the going got tough.”

June 6, 1947
Temple City

Manir Huelsman, 37-year-old railroad worker, of 1922 Blackley St. is not the kind of guy you want as a neighbor. When he discovered the 15-year-old Alaskan sled dog belonging to Mrs. Marjorie Eastin of 616 S. Encinita Ave. was ill on his lawn, he didn’t call Animal Control or ask Mrs. Eastin to come get her pet, oh no. Instead Huelsman, who told police he didn’t “like” the animal, tossed it into a tar pit at Tyler and Rio Hondo Aves. The dog was rescued by a motorist, but had to be destroyed, and now Huelsman, who pled guilty to a charge of cruelty to animals before Justice Eldred Wolford, is free on $100 bond and awaiting sentencing.