February 11, 1947While visiting the home of producer Ray Stark and his wife, actress Gene Tierney stumbled on a rug and fell backwards down some steps, breaking her left foot. Miss Tierney is confined to a wheelchair and will be unable to return to work for two weeks.
Today is the anniversary of the Feb. 10, 1947, Jeanne French murder. Frequently linked to the Black Dahlia in the popular imagination and absurdly claimed as one of the umpteen victims of Dr. George “Evil Genius†Hodel in “Black Dahlia Avenger,†French was a tragic, broken-down alcoholic. Spending the last night of her life in a Westside cafe, she dumped the contents of her purse on the bar and picked through the debris in hopes of finding enough money for just one more drink. She had no paper money, nothing more than a few coins. Whoever killed her beat her with the handle of a socket wrench, pushed her out of his car into the street and stomped on her until a rib broke and punctured her heart. A bleak, terrible death.
Her son, David Wrather, told the coroner’s inquest: “She’s gone now and I’m sure she would want me to say the right thing-she made a lot of her own trouble.â€
Memo from Alex J. Wysocki: “if you wanna rob my liquor store, don’t start by saying ‘Hi, Pop’!”
That was the message learned the hard way by the young gunman who held Wysocki up at 21923 S. Main Street for $150 and two bottles of whiskey, then went in the back to rummage for more plunder. Meanwhile, Wysocki fumed. “Pop? Pop?!” When the kid emerged from the storeroom, Wysocki shot him four times with his .38. The robber ran off, his own gun clicking ineffectually.
A few hours later, a friend dropped the gut-shot 24-year-old Eugene L. Dodson at San Pedro Hospital. When Dodson refused to say how he’d been injured, Det. Lt. Thomas H. Rankin remembered a Sheriff’s broadcast about the hold up and booked the injured man on suspicion of robbery. He was conveyed to the prison ward of General Hospital for surgery, which is where Wysocki ID’d him as the smartass who’d called him “Pop.”
Transient Richard Dennis, 33, broke into Mrs. G.B. Blakeley’s home at 2730 Medford Street and absconded with the one thing most appealing to a sleepy sneak thief: an alarm clock. Unfortunately, he made it no farther than the front lawn before tucking in for a nice snooze. When the alarm went off, Richard slept right through it, but neighbors copped the buzz and called police, who nabbed the man on suspicion (strong suspicion) of burglary.
Harry Crocker will be making his own breakfast if his neighbors on N. Westbourne Drive have anything to do with it. Six of them have successfully sued to have Mrs. Isabel Crocker and daughters Alicia, Jean and Muriel evicted on the grounds that the mother is 3/4 Indian and the girls half so afflicted.
Although Superior Judge Ruben S. Schmidt ruled Thursday that the women must leave their home, in a neighborhood where residence is restricted to Caucasians, the distaff Crockers vow to fight all the way to the Supreme Court, if necessary. Schmidt did grant the family thirty days in which to secure new dwellings for the those Crockers of mixed blood, noting that the Mister, a film cameraman, was welcome to remain at number 435 alone.
While helping to unload a 15-ton marble slab from a freight car at his place of employment, 1801 South Soto Street, Ray Hunt, 43, was crushed to death. The dead man lived at 1706 Wall Street.
Mr. Wolfe seemed flabbergasted, said he had paid Douglas’ publishers to use the quotes, and promised he would check into the matter, and apologize if he’d made a mistake. While Larry waits for that apology, he’s holding his nose and reading Wolfe’s daffy tome, and blogging his reactions. Only on page 6, he’s already gone debunked the claims that there was no nightlife in 1947 L.A., that the Examiner printed a huge-selling extra on the day of the Dahlia killing, and Wolfe’s absurd claims of having been “raised on the wrong side of the tracks in Beverly Hills.”
Larry warns “if you’re not into Dahlia minutiae this will be painfully tedious.” Tune in and see for yourself.
The war came home to the Valley today when an A-26 bomber conducting airflow tests accidentally disgorged an unarmed 12′ missile, which crashed to the ground in a parking lot uncomfortably close to a home at 1730 Keeler Street.
Worried neighbors circled warily until Burbank Police Lt. K.K. Kipers determined the torpedo posed no danger to the public. The plane meanwhile had continued to a rushed landing at Murac Army Air Base, pilot Captain S. D. McFadden complaining of ill-handling after a dive, but not realizing he’d dropped anything.
Miss Isabel Foster feels lucky to be alive tonight after being accosted by a man in a 1940 sedan while she was waiting for a bus at West Adams and Redondo Blvd. He asked if she needed a ride, and when she demurred showed a butcher knife and demanded she climb into the passenger seat. Terrified, she complied.
“Where’dya live?”
“3-3-3-3895 M-m-m-main Street.”
“Stop blubbering!”
“I… can’t…”
“Shut up, or I’ll give you what I gave the Black Dahlia!” And with that he cut her across the knuckles. The man drove closer to Isabel’s home. When they were a block away, she opened the passenger door and ran.
Her attacker is described as, slim, dark skinned, late 20s, about 5’8″, wearing dark work clothes and a “ridiculous” stocking cap.
And in mid-city Hermenegildo G. Robles Jr., 25, shot his estranged, pregnant wife Guillermina in her mother’s house, goes to church and inflicted on non-fatal wound on himself.
More than two weeks after the body of Elizabeth Short, 22, a Massachusetts-born transient, was discovered cut into two halves in the weeds in a Leimert Park lot, homicide detectives continued beating the pavement seeking clues to the baffling and gruesome crime.
On the town’s west side, a search was on for a young blond man seen driving an unlicensed coupe with a stained blanket on the passenger seat, as well as for another vehicle possibly seen pulling away from the Norton Avenue crime scene.
Acting on reports that the victim had used candle wax to fill untreated dental cavities, and noting the presence of two votive candles in her checked luggage, detectives inquired with the bathroom attendant at the Biltmore to discover if anyone had seen Short tending to her teeth there on January 9. No one had.
Most pressing was the need to find the murder site, which was perhaps a private home located some distance from its neighbors… or maybe a trailer, one of hundreds being used as homes in the overpopulated city. And if it was a trailer, what’s to say the fiend hadn’t already moved away in it, taking the evidence and his wickedness far from the men of law who seek him?
Two questions remain in the forefront of every L.A. cop’s mind, and those of the citizenry: who killed Elizabeth Short, and would he strike again?
