Month: June 2006

June 5, 1907
Los Angeles

More marital bliss! At six p.m. Frank Harrington, 38, was drinking in a saloon at Thirty-Eighth and Central with his buddy George Tanner. Tanner asked if Frank was feeling better, after having been under the weather of late, to which Frank merely replied “No–I feel bad.” Frank took off home, and the next thing Tanner heard were pistol reports. He dashed a short distance to the Harrington home, 3505 Central, where the Harringtons resided behind the delicatessen in which Frank and his wife Susanna tended shop. Tanner made a terrible discovery.

Frank’s brains were on the floor. Mrs. Harrington, 52, had had a bullet pass from behind her left ear, tearing away her palate on its egress; another entered behind her right eye and exited through the right side of her face, a third left a bad opening across her forehead. The coroners were called.

Coroners take their own sweet time, because, after all, what’s the rush? Their bodies therefore lay on the floor for two hours before the wagon came. One thing, though. The Harringtons were still alive.

The papers state that Harrington, at Receiving Hospital, is still alive but “liable to die at any moment.” Mrs. Harrington was removed from Receiving to Good Samaritan Hospital, where it was reported that she never lost consciousness through the ordeal.

Acquaintances note that despite the couple’s interesting age difference, Mr. Harrington was often jealous, and the two therefore quarreled routinely.

Further investigation into news accounts of the time does not reveal whether one or both of the Harringtons survived and, if they did, whether they stayed together afterward, thereby fulfilling the old “til death do us part” pledge.