Author: Kim Cooper

Last January 7, Robert C. Sweet told his namesake son that it was high time he supported himself, his fiancee and her two children, rather than expecting his father do so. Junior responded with his fists, and the next day the old man went to his lawyer and drew up a new will. That will was filed for probate in Superior Court today, with the novel bequest of $10 to Robert Jr. as “payment for a wonderful beating.” The remainder of his small estate was left to his widow Hazel, on the condition that she give none of it to Robert Jr. The elder Sweet resided at 304 N. Canyon Blvd., Monrovia, and the pugilistic scion at 930 Monterey Street.

All Mrs. Florence Owens wanted was a place to leave 18-month-old Dale and 3-month-old Margaret while she was at her new job–the one she had to take after separating from her husband, the merchant marine. Mrs. Marian Billingsley seemed nice enough, and she said Dale and Margaret would be no trouble; she’d just watch them like she watched the old folks already parked in her nursing home at 1327 El Segundo Blvd.

And so Flo dropped her little darlings off on April 15 and worked two weeks straight, never stopping to visit, even though she lived just five miles away at 1600 Redondo Beach Blvd.

But give a neglectful, overwhelmed mom some credit. When she did finally stop by, she immediately noticed evidence of torture on her eldest tyke– the scarred ears, the scratches, the welts and bruises on his hips and back–and rushed him to the Sheriff’s Vermont substation. Dale was taken to Torrance General Hospital, and Mrs. Billingsley to County Jail on charges of child neglect and unjustifiable punishment of a child.

Lt. Carl Pearson of the Sheriff’s Vice Squad caught a dozen bookies in their lair behind an upholstery shop at 1435 N. Miller Ave. today, three of them of the feminine variety. The miscreants worked out of a secret room wired with nine telephones, and kept their records on scratch sheets tucked inside a secret wall panel. Booked at the East L.A. substation on suspicion of felonious bookmaking were Alice Melvin, 26, Howard Sternberg, 30, Maurice Bach, 45, Adelbert McLaughlin, 33, Juanita Silver, 34, Sidney Corsen, 38, Harry Faln, 47, Marjorie Burns, 40, Stephen Walsh, 32, Phil Miller, 25, Paul Searle, 22 and David Drobman, 30. It is unknown if the phone company ratted them out.

Parking on the street was not an option for 18-year-old assistant theater manager Mrs. Ginerva Knight, but she just didn’t like the look of that heavy shrubbery on the way to her garage at 1515 Courtney Avenue. Hence her unusual routine: come home from work after one a.m. and pull her convertible coupe partway into the driveway, enter the living room and obtain her .38 snubnosed revolver (for which she had no carrying permit), return to the car and only then ease it up towards the garage. That’s where Thomas Housos, 24-year-old transient, was waiting to wrap his hand around her mouth and instruct “If you scream, I’ll kill you. I’m taking you and the car and backing out of here!”

Mrs. Knight was pushed down to the floorboards as Housos lowered his own pistol to begin the delicate process of backing out the driveway. She pleaded loudly in order to drown out the sound of her gun cocking, then shot Housos in the belly. “You killed me!” he screamed, and attacked the woman. They struggled, she banged his head with her gun, and when he wouldn’t die finally shot him in the face. He collapsed, and the car lurched into the side of the house. He was declared dead at the scene.

Housos’ own car, a black coupe, was found parked at Sunset and Courtney. In it were his identification papers and a document attesting to his marriage last week to a girl in San Francisco. Housos was honorably discharged from the Air Force in December 1943. He was a member of the Oaklawn Jockey Club in Hot Springs, Arkansas, and played a bit part as a jockey in a film in June 1944. In January, 1945, he was convicted in Texas on charges of entering a woman’s car at a traffic signal in San Antonio and robbing her. He was sentenced to ten years, but paroled in September, 1946.

Mrs. Knight, a war widow whose husband was killed in the merchant marine, lives at the home on Courtney with her 16-month-old son Ian, her mother, Mrs. Adelaide Boeing, and her grandmother Mrs. Hariet M. Ryer. Mrs. Boeing, whose late former husband was no relation to the aircraft manufacturer, once flew under the name Adelaide Cellina with Amelia Earhart in the Cleveland National Air Races.

Don’t rent a room from Mrs. L.E. Manners–she hasn’t got any! That’s the word from Coast Guard vet Richard Hier and wife Patti, who returned from a birthday party last night to their brand new apartment on the second floor of the home at 5732 Harold Way to find the door off the hinges, their possessions dumped onto the floor, and every stick of furniture–including stove, fridge, even the lightbulbs–gone. Mrs. Manners too was out of the picture. For now Mr. H. is bunking in his old hammock, the same one the torpedo blew him out of during his South Pacific service, while the lady wife tosses on the wooden floor wrapped in a quilt.

A household chore turned terrifying today when an unoccupied Veteran’s Transit taxicab careened down a hillside and into Mrs. F.C. Plantz’ house at 1505 Ewing Street. At the time, Plantz’ friend Myron Fales (35, of 530 S. Pasadena Ave in Whittier) was standing on a stepladder peeling off siding. Fales heard the cab coming down through the brush, and was able to jump to safety just before the cab burst through the siding and splintered the house’s wall. The driver, Mitchell Parrino of 1731 W. 18th Street, told police he had left his cab parked up the hill in front of 2019 Avon Street.

Darn that Seely boy!

Lee Seely, 11, invited Jackie Cooper (12, of 4172 Yosemite Way) and Charles Gullihur (9, 2838 Delevan Drive) over to his house at 4053 W. Avenue 42 to mess around in the basement. Someone got frisky with one of the 40-mm anti-aircraft shells stored down among the cobwebs and canned peaches, and it blew. The house didn’t fare well: the basement door shot twenty feet off its hinges, windows shattered and the walls shifted on the foundations. Strafed with shrapnel, Lee and Jack were rushed to General Hospital for emergency surgery; they were in critical condition this afternoon, Jackie with leg wounds that will almost certainly require amputation, Lee with a gut full of metal.

Charles, who was maybe too little to be trusted with the important task of blowing up a basement and nearly killing himself, was shaken but unhurt.

Police are still trying to make sense of a last night’s mysterious car chase in Echo Park. It all started when Motorcycle Office Carl Ericson spotted a taxicab that has been suspiciously repainted blue. He gave chase, and the vehicle turned onto Echo Park Avenue, racing past the lake and south towards Beverly. In front of 512 Echo Park Ave., the cab collided with a car driven by Walter Cliburne, 35, of 1947 Preston Ave. Cliburne’s car ended up atop both the cab and a parked car. An ambulence was called, and the attendants directed their attention to the injured, still-unidentified cab driver. Suddenly he brought a vial of poison up to his mouth and made as to swallow. Attempts to wrest it away were fruitless, and the mystery man said, “I am going to die, so let me die.” He did, shortly afterwards, in the ambulence.

Lawrence Lipton couldn’t take it anymore. His wife, best-selling crime novelist Craig Rice, insisted he stay up with her until four or five every morning, while she talked, talked and talked. He couldn’t write his own books on two hours of sleep. “It made me ill,” he complained. She humiliated him in front of friends and servants, disrupting his attempts at conversation with a lordly, “Don’t pay any attention to him.” Despite their household staff, she insisted Lipton clean out the fireplaces. And as for having business conversations around her? Impossible. Lipton’s witness, Raymond J. Healy of Simon & Schuster told Judge Alfred E. Paonessa that Rice routinely told Lipton to “Shut up,” and seemed both personally and professionally jealous of her spouse.

Judge Paonessa granted the divorce decree, noting that under an agreement worked out by the parties, Miss Rice would retain ownership of the 15-room house at 351 23rd Street, Santa Monica, they would own their own copyrights, and maintain joint ownership of collarborative works. The couple were married at Ft. Atkinson, Wisconsin on March 31, 1940, and separated last October 4.