All the world loves a clown… especially a Crime clown! And when the editor of Pasadena Weekly heard about Crimebo, he upgraded Carl Kozlowski’s planned feature on the Pasadena Confidential tour from the arts section to the cover! Sneak a peek, online or in person, and don’t miss Matt Craig’s evocative photos.
Aug. 3, 1907Newsflash: I have just learned that our popular Crime Clown Crimebo will be interviewed on The Don & Mike Show at 2:30pm Pacific Time today. Tune in online to hear Crimebo share a special tale from August 2, 2002, involving a teenage vampire and his 90-year-old neighbor. You just know with a cast of characters like that, it’s either going to be a love story or… well, let’s just say it is not a love story.
Click LISTEN LIVE on the upper left of their webpage for your daily dose of Crimebo.
Still, it
August 2, 1907
San Pedro
The great wharfs and piers of Los Angeles are by and large but a thing of memory. Who cannot tilt a head in wonder as one motors up PCH past the State Historic Landmark signage for the Port of Los Angeles Long Wharf, designating it “site of” the longest wooden pier in the world?
It was dismantled after San Pedro became our official harbor in 1897.
Ten years later, on this day, while the wharf was under construction, stout men were busy pulling bodies from the briny Pedro deep.
Seems that trainmen ran heavily-loaded cars onto the trackless uncompleted portion, causing 365 feet of trestle work to collapse, crushing Bakko Kovavich and drowning three others—Melia Bolich and Miko Kovavich. Where Native Americans famously built our skyscrapers, it would appear that Greeks built our piers.
Remember these men when next you enjoy the fruits of our port system.
August 1, 1907
Los Angeles 
July, 1907: It was decided by members of the La Mano Nera, the criminal vein that runs through LA’s Italian community, that seventeen year-old Josephine San Marco was to wed Samuel Laturco. But Josephine, thoroughly modern and resolute in matters of her own heart, would have none of it. She went on to entertain one Joseph Desparti in the parlor of her home.
Laturco, threatened with death by his own father should he not “clean out” the San Marco home, fired three rounds into the parlor. Neither Joseph nor Josephine were hit; one bullet did kill six year-old Marie San Marco. Laturco and his father, Francisco Laturco, were arrested.
And now, with the entire Italian community against her, and with threats of death piling up like unanswered mail, the dark-eyed teen has set out to avenge her tiny sister’s slaying. Under the withering, threatening gaze of the people she once loved, Josephine took the stand today to testify against the Laturci. Warned time and again that she need only wed Laturco the Younger and thereby save him from the gallows, she grits her teeth and stands in Los Angeles Superior Court alone, as all other witnesses refuse to testify.
She bears these men a hate and her sister a duty, whence comes an uncommon bravery:
“They have killed my sister, now let them look to it for their lives. I will never give up. They have abused me and threatened me and tried to compel me to marry Laturco, but they have failed. I do not fear their society. They have killed my sister and I’ll have the satisfaction for that life if I die for it. My mother fears they will murder as they say, that they will burn our home, and cause us trouble. She urged me to marry Laturco and settle the trouble. But I won’t. I have set my mind on this and I won’t back out. Let them burn and murder all they want, but the won’t head off that prosecution. I have started it and I will be there at the finish.”
Aug. 1, 1907
Los Angeles
A mass of bees
Yes, kids, that’s Crimebo the Crime Clown looming horribly behind 1947project Crime Bus Tour hosts Kim and Nathan (and Nathan’s collection of embalming fluid bottles), in an outtake from today’s photo shoot for the cover of Pasadena Weekly!
You can hear Crimebo tonight on Peter Anthony Holder’s show at 10:35pm Pacific Time, over the web from the website of CJAD 800 AM, Montreal, Canada. And next Friday, he’s the guest of the Molson & Lee Show on WMAY, Springfield, IL, live at 11am Pacific Time. Click and enjoy.
Photo above by Richard Schave. Stay tuned for more grisly images soon.
July 31, 1907
Whittier
Despite the pleadings of well-situated friends, Eugene Parks, Junior is bound to face a Superior Court judge and answer to the charge of attempted theft of nearly a whole wagonload of lemons from the Whittier Citrus Association’s railway siding. Parks and his pal Kirchner were caught in the act by Superintendent Greeley of the State School, and all the lemons were saved.
In court today, the youngsters begged the judge to accept as an extenuating circumstance the fact that they were looped to the gills on strong beer, half a dozen bottles a piece, and to recognize that they were at heart honest boys from good homes. But he would have none of it. For if a little beer would make thieves of them, then thieves they were, and only a higher court could determine an appropriate punishment.
