Bertha Bremley, 5809 Blackstone, Bellflower, is baffled. It was less than two blocks from the clothing shop at 529 S. Broadway to the bank, she remembers nothing unusual happening during her walk, and yet when she arrived she no longer was holding the money bag containing $1000 in checks and $2155 cash which she intended to deposit.
That is one smooth pickpocket! Downtown strollers beware.
November 28, 1947In sentencing ex-con Homer Stone, 45, to a stint of one to ten years in San Quentin, Judge Clement D. Nye didn’t praise Stone for pleading guilty and saving the state time and money, no. Rather, he rode the man who admits he beat his mother with a washboard after she accused him of being drunk.
“She called me a bad name, your honor,” whined Homer. “I don’t think she called you nearly enough,” said the Judge. “If I had been there I’m sure I would have called you exactly what she did.” Whereupon, one assumes, Homer would have beat Judge Nye with a washboard, so it’s just as well he wasn’t. The Stone home: 339 W. 46th Street.
Recommended listening: “Washboard” by the magnificent, mysteriously under-rated Florida garage band The Nightcrawlers.
Driving in heavy fog last night, Chief Petty Officer Lavern J. Ringle, USN, veered off the road at Crenshaw and Manhattan Beach Boulevards and struck a eucalyptus tree. The collision fatally injured Ringle’s 15-month-old daughter Cecelia Ann and left her mother Mae Amy in serious condition. Also slightly injured were Roger Ringle, 6, and his friend Ronald Taber, 1o. The Ringles reside at 920 Silva Street, Long Beach.
16-year-old William Brooks Tissue was minding a used car lot for the owner when William F. Anserson, 25, asked Billy to show him what one of the cars could do. Once they were moving, Anderson produced a pistol and demanded the boy keep driving east. At 76th Street and Atlantic Ave., the brave youth ran the car up onto a curb and lunged for Anderson’s pistol. Anderson ran, and was quickly arrested on a charge of kidnapping and robbery by two police officers who witnessed the incident.
Brave Billy Tissue weighs just 110 pounds and wears steel leg braces following an attack of infantile paralysis in 1938.
Clunk! Gas leaking from a new heater inside a garment plant at 104th Street and Grevillea Ave. poisoned five women, who keeled over their electric sewing machines around 10:30 this morning and had to be carried outside by their woozy co-workers. The women were given oxygen by a Fire Department rescue team, with the most seriously afflicted taken to Harbor General for observation.
After the firemen left, the remaining women returned to work, and soon the vacant lot beside the plant was filled with another round of queasy, disoriented gals. The firemen came back to treat these new victims.
Later still, the women who had been helping the others finally succumbed after eating their gas-soaked lunches, and the firemen came out for a third time. Only then were plant owners Mrs. amd Mrs. Cecil Webb told to shut up shop and fix the damn heater before allowing anyone back to work.
November 23, 1947Two college boys out for a lark on a Saturday night. A nightclub. A cigarette machine. Trouble.
Patrick Cantillon, 20, 11610 Bellagio Road, Bel-Air and his pal, 22-year-old Martin F. Davis of 442 S. Bedford Drive, Beverly Hills, were inside Tabu of Hollywood, 7290 Sunset Blvd., when they became enamored of the cigarette machine, and sought to remove it from the premises.
Co-owner Leo Pavich, 1002 California Street, objected and bloodied the lads, who retreated with vengeance on their minds. Soon a bottle was hurled from a passing car, breaking one of Tabu’s front windows and nearly striking several patrons. It was war.
The boys returned, bearing bricks. Pavich drew his gun and fired through their windshield, there was a scamble on the sidewalk, one of the youths took off running and Pavich shot at his fleeing figure. At this point several Tabu patrons had joined the melee. What fun!
No one was seriously hurt. Cantillon and Davis received emergency treatment for minor injuries, as did Tabu patron Larry Borgan. Then the would-be cigarette bandits were booked into the Hollywood Jail. We presume their mommies and daddies are not amused.
County officials are in no hurry to play host to 18-year-old Leonard L. Chambers, 652 S. Indiana Street, who was found guilty of going 55 in a 25 mph zone and sentenced by Santa Monica Municipal Judge Lawrence Scherb to 10 days in jail (nine suspended), 30 days without a driving license, and to visit the County Morgue in the next 10 days to gaze upon the mangled body of a speeding victim. A Coroner’s office spokesman told the Times that in light of regulations, it was unlikely that this grisly date would be kept.
When Henry Davis Jr., 24, died at Georgia Street Receiving Hospital yesterday, it seemed from his deathbed remarks that he’d been shot for having an empty wallet, after a trigger-happy pair of robbers hadn’t bothered to look for cash in his pockets.
But when a Mrs. Henry Davis Jr. called the hospital asking about her husband, who had just expired, police became suspicious. If Davis had been kidnapped, robbed and dumped at the hospital, how would the wife have the slightest idea where he was?
Det. Sgts. L.O. Burton and J.G. Cotch had a talk with Mrs. Davis at her home at 2228 E. 98th Street, and soon learned that Ervie Smith, 21, of 9697 E. 98th Street had informed her that after holding up some gamblers for $700 in Santa Monica, Henry shot himself in the gut while putting his gun away. As a dying thanks to his partner for not stripping his pockets, Henry came up with the robbery story… and he would have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn’t for his meddling wife (who, presumably, will not be getting the $250 Henry died with).
When the police found Henry Davis Jr. of 2228 E. 98th Street in the driveway of the Georgia Street Receiving Hospital, where he’d been tossed from a car, he was bleeding from a gunshot to the belly and near death. He told officers that two armed men had forced him into their car, discovered his empty wallet, and shot him before he could offer up the cash in his pockets. Then these hair-trigger fellas had dropped him off at Georgia Street.
After Davis died, police found more than $250 in his clothing.
$13,100. That’s the amount Mrs. Marie Waterman wants as compensation for the events of last December 15, when her hand became trapped in the bathroom window of her apartment at 334 N. Normandie. Mrs. Waterman was in the all together at the time, and could not reach a towel. When she finally yelled for help, a man answered her cries and got an eyefull.
She is in Superior Court hoping that Western Loan & Building Co, her landlords, will pony up a whole field of cabbage for her trouble.
