Author: Kim Cooper

Lester Henry has been losing beehives and honey during the night, so he called in two Glendale hunters, Jim Stevenson and H.A. Mathieson, along with six of their hounds. The dogs swiftly treed a six-foot bear about 100 yards from the intersection of Balboa Blvd. and Rinaldi Street. The men used bows and arrows to drop their quarry.

The bear, estimated to have been 14 years old, is the first seen in the area in several years, and is believed to have come into the valley from the Wilson Ranch.

The three boys from Altadena just planned to see their lady friend off at the Pasadena bus terminal for a trip to Philly. But as the bus pulled out of the station, they jumped back into their coupe and sped after it, waving (one assumes less frantically as the hours passed). When the bus alit in Las Vegas, they called home asking that cash be wired to Salt Lake.

But instead of money, it was the Man who awaited the romantic fools. The cops held the youths until their parents could collect them, while the lady’s bus, freed of its gallant shadow, sped off for the East.

Mrs. and Mrs. Leonard Wood of 416 N. Avenue 57 were shocked last night by the violent chiding given by Sheppard W. King III, 22, to his 2-year-old son and namesake.

The male Kings, of 1811 N. Whitley Ave., had sat separately from the boy’s mother inside the lobby of the Pantages Theater because of crowding. When the baby talked during the show, the Woods allege, his father took him into the lobby and hit him multiple times in the face, causing blood to spurt from the child’s nose. The Woods then followed the young family home, and called police to report the abuse.

Sheppard Senior was booked into Hollywood Jail, where he denies striking the child with undue force. Sheppard Junior, meanwhile, was treated at Georgia Street Receiving Hospital for two black eyes, facial and cranial bruises, and a cut lip, before being returned to his mother’s care.

(I will leave it to our staff detective, Larry Harnisch, to tell us if this is the same Shep King III who–under the monicker Abdullah and described as a Texas playboy–was divorced by world renowned belly dancer Samia Gamal in 1953 under mysterious charges of ill-treatment.)

For the second time in two weeks, pint-sized miscreant Thomas George Redhead, 14, has busted out of Juvenile Hall. This time the boy, whose initial offense was stealing a Pacific Electric bus, which he drove to San Diego, shimmied up to the second story of the detention center and dropped more than 16 feet to make a fresh escape. I guess it’s true what they say about Redheads…

Soon after the employees of the cooperatively-owned women’s fashion workshop Glamour Gauge Manufacturing Co, 2514 E. Gage Ave., voted not to join the A.F.L. International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union, the threats began. Ventura Fashions of California, for which Glamour Gauge makes clothing, complained to Superior Court last week that a union agent had threatened to destroy their business, possibly with bloodshed.

But it was by stink-]shed that the attack came, by way of a half-brick tied to a fruit jar packed with noxious acids, hurled through Glamour Gauge’s transom last night. The smell was so foul that the adjacent market, novelty shop and typewriter shop were rendered unfit for use, and passersby on the sidewalk also held their noses and ran. Police and the D.A.’s office are investigating.

7-year-old Paul Esparza Jr. is in Juvenile Hall today, but that’s an improvement on his home life. Discovered locked in a five-foot square windowless closet at 1341 S. McBride Street after his cries were heard by a woman who’d come to fill the family dog’s water dish, Paul was freed from his tiny prison after deputies broke down the door.

The senior Paul Esparza, a cement worker, and the boy’s stepmother reportedly locked him up for the past six days before they left for work. Paul was imprisoned while his 6-year-old brother Robert was in school and baby Richard cared for by relatives, due to Paul Junior’s contagious skin condition.

Paul senior was arrested on his return to the house and booked on suspicion of child neglect. Neglect? The kid had water and sandwiches!

FRIDAY, October 7
October is International Bubblegum Month. Let us now bow before all things sugary, joyful, underappreciated and one-hit-wonderful with the Bubblegum Achievement Awards, brought to us by the fun-pushers from Scram magazine. The awards go to Steve Barri (Grass Roots string puller, producer of the all-chimp band Lancelot Link & the Evolution Revolution), Ron Dante (the Archies), Joey Levine (Ohio Express) and Dr. Demento, who needs no parenthetical. Besides sweet acceptance speeches, there will be a screening of the new documentary Bubblegum Music Is the Naked Truth, live performances by Dante, the Bubblegum Queen and Canned Hamm, a special puppet spectacular created by marionette master Bob Baker, and a visit from Abram the Safety Ape, plus cake, ice cream, Bazooka bubblegum, raffle prizes, oddly hip and hiply odd people. My candidate for next year: the Buoys, the Rupert Holmes-led band who recorded “Timothy,” the peppiest song about eating your friend ever recorded. Bob Baker Marionette Theater, 1345 W. First St.; Fri., Oct. 7, 7 p.m.; $52. (323) 223-2767.

Girls of Santa Monica, beware! If a dark-skinned man in his late 20s, dressed in frayed workman’s clothing, should approach you, run away, lest you suffer the terrible fate of Lillian Dominguez, 15, or the slightly less terrible fate of Barbara Jean Morse, 14.

Lillian of course is the schoolgirl victim of an unknown fiend, murdered Wednesday as she walked home from a school dance at Garfield Elementary with two classmates. A man approached the girls at 17th Street and Michigan Avenue, and did something to Lillian. She cried, “That man touched me! I can’t see,” and collapsed with a fatal wound to her heart muscle.

Now Barbara Jean Morse has come forward with a similar tale of being approached a month ago while walking through an alley one morning near her home at 343 Euclid and, she thought, struck by a strange man. She ran away, and only on arriving home covered in blood and in pain was it discovered she had been stabbed by a stiletto-type weapon.

Police remain baffled as to the motive or the perpetrator of these sadistic crimes.

James Harry Hoxworth, 40, has a pretty good idea who’s messing with his wife Violet–family friend Harold E. Ward, also 40. Why, they’re out in a car together right now!

James and his shotgun waited at the Hoxworth home at 1143-B Junipero Ave., and when Harold and Violet pulled up, James jammed the barrel through the car window and blew a fatal hole in Harold’s chest. Then he yanked Violet out the passenger door and beat her soundly.

When police arrived, they found a note inside the home, scrawled in crayon, in which James accused Violet of infidelity.

Gift suggestion for the prison bound artiste: Crayola Travel On Case