Author: Kim Cooper

A shiny new dime glinted brieflyat the bottom of a hole at East 58th Street and Naomi Ave. before being topped by a trolley pole, the first of many to planted as part of a new electrical trackless trolley system.

B.M. (Barney) Larrick, L.A. Transit Lines operating manager, dropped the dime as a symbolic good luck offering to the new coach route which, once it opens on June 1, will run up Central Ave. to Fifth Street, west to Beaudry, then east on Sixth. It’s hoped the gods of transit safety will be pleased with so paltry an offering. It’s the thought that counts!

James Edwards, 57-year-old busboy in a Broadway cafeteria, is one of those folks who doesn’t trust banks. He’s been saving for many years with the dream of owning his own home.

This morning, near East Second and Los Angeles Streets, a robber clouted him over the head and emptied his wallet. When checked into the Georgia Street Receiving Hospital, Edwards still wore his cartridge belt, stuffed to bursting with crumpled bills. Nurses and a detective helped the dazed man count his savings for the first time in a long while… $3843 total, plus $1.17 in loose change. The robber got $75.

Word’s out, oh frugal friend. You better open a bank account, or take a cab to work from now on!

The 1947project bloggers have been hard at work, uncovering some of the
most ghastly tales ever to unfold in the great central heart of our
city. In April, you can discover these horrors on a little bus tour
we’re calling Nightmares of Bunker Hill.

To give us a sense of how much demand there is for seats, we ask your
assistance. If you would be interested in attending this tour, please
visit our online poll and answer three simple questions, as accurately
as you can. Answering will not obligate you to purchase tickets, but
will help up reserve the proper size bus or busses for our passengers.

Don’t forget, it’s just four days until the big changeover from
blogspot to our own URL, and a brand new year of true crime discovery.
If I were you, I’d peel an eye at over the
weekend… some clues might be dropped.

yours faithfully,
Kim
1947project

Flummoxed partway through the ride home to El Toro Marine Base, when the Negro cabbie suggested he come up front and take the wheel as he was feeling sleepy, Patrick Crawford accomodated the snoring driver by delivering him straight to the Santa Ana cops. It was a good instinct on the young Marine’s part: investigation revealed that sleepy Mervin Wilturner, 21, was likely the fare who had shot the cab’s real owner, Beverly J. Barton, twice in the head earlier this evening. Barton is in critical condition in French Hospital, while Wilturner, a transient, is being held at Newton Street Police Station on suspicion of assault with intent to commit murder.

While busting Robert Chelsea Putter, 49, on a forgery charge, officers made a delightful discovery. Putter had written an 18-page booklet instructing would-be forgers on the rules of the trade. Unfortunately, he had neglected to follow his own advice, and landed in the pokey.

The specific rules not followed? “When you don’t succeed in passing a check, get out of town but fast.” And “chain markets keep a list of names that have been used in past forgeries.”

In the course of fining a driver who admitted to driving 38mph in a 20mph zone, Judge J.J. Quillin quipped that he admired the fellow’s forbearance, for he was the first California driver he’d ever known to drive under 50!

His curtains blazing, Charles Mason, 71, raced towards the heat of the flames and fought bravely to extinguish them. He gave no thought to his blindness and merely did all he could to staunch the fire and save his furnishings–and succeeded, though not without injury. When his roomate William H. Watson came home to the flat at 1126 Washington Blvd., he found Charles terribly burned, and he died soon after at Santa Monica Hospital.

When two Pacific Electric freight cars derailed near Firestone Blvd. and Maie Avenue, Helen Gil, 25, observed the carnage from a prudent 40 yards away… prudent, that is, until the fence beside which she was standing crumpled under the weight of the cars and collapsed, fracturing her ankle and giving her a possible concussion.

Since 1944, Sarah Shirley Ruenker, 32, has suffered crippling claustrophobia, an ailment that today nearly kept her from filing for divorce against her machinist husband Carl. Accompanied by her attorney Barry Woodmansee, she bravely stepped into the tiny elevator at City Hall… then crumpled in tears and had to be carried out by Woodmansee and the operator. After quieting her, Woodmansee rode alone to the 19th floor, where he explained to Judge Paul Vallee the reason for Sarah’s nonappearance. A sympathetic man, the judge agreed to hear the case on the ground floor of the Probate Courts Building, and granted the lady her divorce on grounds of non-support.