Beating – Page 2 – 1947 Project

She Who Must Be Obeyed

She Who Must Be Obeyed Headline

October 22, 1927
Reno, Nevada

Frederick D. Mason told District Judge G.A. Bartlett that he was seeking a divorce from his wife Louise for a few very good reasons. He said that Louise believed that “she had been born to rule”. He moaned to the judge that his domestic life was utterly miserable. Louise insisted upon picking his friends, clothing, and leisure activities. And then to add insult to injury, she forced him to do the housework!

Formerly in the real estate business in Hollywood and Los Angeles, Mason said that it was bad enough that his wife was so domineering but when she began to smack him around and to bring other men home, he knew it was time to pack his bags.

Did Louise bring the other men home to help Fred vacuum the rugs and dust the tchotchkes? The abused husband didn’t think so.

Brotherly Lumps

East Los Angeles
October 5, 1927

Found wandering in a dazed and bloody state near Ninth and Dacotah, all attorney Frank Sweeney could say to police in the Georgia Street Station was "please don’t hit me!" Taken round the corner to the hospital, he was discovered to have a possible skull fracture.

In a moment of clarity, Frank suggested officers talk to his sister-in-law Mrs. Jack Sweeney at 101 South Bunker Hill Avenue (a now lost street, one tail of which remains). The lady promptly admitted that Frank had been over the night before and had said unpleasant things about her, whereupon her Jack knocked him into the stove. Why yes, he had suffered head injuries in the fracas. But gee, a skull fracture? He must have gotten that after he left.

Entirely possible, of course. Bunker Hill’s not known as the Historic Skull Fracture District for nothing!

The Cruel Miss Doe

Cruel Miss Doe Headline

September 29, 1927
Los Angeles

Following a frenzied search, three year old Betty Jane Wagner is finally back at home where she belongs. The little girl went missing during a downtown shopping trip with her mother, Mrs. Agnes Wagner.

Covered in painful welts and bruises, the tiny victim recounted her ordeal to Detective Lieutenants Cawthorne, Harrah, and policewoman Vesta Dunn. “A naughty old woman took me and hurt me a lot”, she sobbed. She told police that she had been walking alongside her mother when she was suddenly grabbed by a strange woman who stuffed a handkerchief into her mouth, then carried her away. Unfortunately Betty Jane is much too young to give a detailed account of her kidnapping, but police are following up on a tip given to them by an elevator operator. The tipster works in a building downtown and told police that he’d taken a woman and child to the top floor. He was suspicious when the woman later exited the building without the tot.

Police are seeking a woman whom they have described as a being a “mental case who derives pleasure from inflicting pain on others”. Her identity is unknown, so a warrant for assault has been issued in the name of “Jane Doe”.

Betty Jane’s family is relieved that she has been returned to them, but they are bewildered by the brutal treatment that the toddler received at the hands of her abductor. The girl’s mother said that she could offer no reason for the pitiless attack upon her child.

There was no follow-up to little Betty Jane’s story in the Los Angeles Times, so we’ll never know if Jane Doe was caught – and we’ll also never discover if she was a sad mental case, or a monster. There would be one account later in the year of a mystery woman’s failed attempt to lure a child into her car, but no arrest was made.

Jane Doe may have resurfaced in 1929 when several children in the Los Angeles area were abducted in department stores, taken to a restroom, and severely beaten by a woman who then released them. If it was the same woman who snatched Betty Jane Wagner and so cruelly battered her – where was she from 1927 to 1929?

During the 1920s, one of the most common methods of treatment for mental disease was to dose the patient with barbiturates and other depressants to induce sleep. Was the mystery woman confined to an institution and subjected to “narcosis therapy” for two years? It’s conceivable that Miss Doe spent time in a dreary hospital room, sleeping fitfully on a narrow metal-framed bed, tortured by her drug induced nightmares.

AKA Hydrochloric Hattie

September 21, 1927
West Los Angeles

Oh, Officers? When you decide to go out and arrest a lady who’s been threatening to chop up her neighbors with a carving knife, you might not want to knock on her door and stand there like waiting until she sprinkles your faces and ears with acid from a bottle. Eventually, Mrs. Mary L. Ward of 11014 Santa Monica Boulevard was captured, halted by the effects of tear gas as she prepared another acid bomb from the large store in her bedroom. She’s in the psycho ward at County General tonight, which has a special program in becoming a better neighbor.

The Long Count to Death

LONG COUNT HEADLINE

September 17, 1927
Bell

young boxer 1920s

When two amateur fighters faced each other in the boxing ring at the Cudahy Athletic Club in Bell, each expected to emerge victorious…they could never have imagined that one of them would die.

The young pugilists had been promised two dollars apiece by fight promoter and referee, A. De Weese. Harold Williams, seventeen, of 580 Wilcox Avenue, Bell, was upright for barely two minutes before he was knocked to the canvas three consecutive times by James Campbell, nineteen, of 4549 East Sixth Street, Los Angeles. Harold died of a brain hemorrhage at the scene.

At the coroner’s inquest Harold’s brother Loren who had witnessed the fight, stated that Harold was given a “long count” (longer than ten seconds) by referee De Weese and so was allowed to continue fighting when he should have been counted out. De Weese and Campbell were arrested for manslaughter and each held on $10,000 (119,712.07 USD 2007 dollars) bail. Charges against them would be dismissed when Municipal Judge Baird ruled that there had been no violation of the California Penal Code.

Harold’s may be one of the saddest long counts, but the most famous long count in boxing history is still five days in the future.

Dempsey vs Tunney The much anticipated rematch between defending heavyweight champion Gene Tunney, the “Fighting Marine”, and former champion Jack Dempsey, the “Manassa Mauler”, will be held at Solider Field in Chicago on September 26, 1927. Tunney will dominate for the first six rounds, but during the seventh round he will find himself in a corner being pummeled by a savage combination of punches that will drive him to the floor.

Referee Dave Barry ordered Dempsey to return to a neutral corner, but the former champ ignored him for approximately nine seconds. Those few seconds would prove crucial. According to the rules the referee was not allowed to begin the count until Dempsey had returned to a neutral corner. It is very likely that Dempsey’s delay cost him the championship. Tunney had thirteen to sixteen seconds to recover during the long count.

Tunney dropped Dempsey briefly during the eighth round – he retained his title and retired undefeated.

Dempsey retired after his bout with Tunney and opened a restaurant in New York City.

The Adventures of Tiger Girl

Tiger Girl Headline

September 10, 1927 Clara Phillips
San Quentin

Infamous murderess Clara Phillips, aka “Tiger Girl”, has attempted suicide. She was found on the floor of her San Quentin prison cell bleeding profusely from self-inflicted wounds to her wrists. Clara is currently five years into a term of from ten years to life for the hammer slaying of a twenty year old widow, Mrs. Alberta Meadows. She considered the woman her “love rival” and lured her to an open field, where in a jealous rage she battered the woman to death in front of a witness.

Before committing murder at age 23, Clara had already led an extraordinary life. Married to Armour L. Phillips at age 14, she had been a chorus girl, Santa Monica bathing beauty, and briefly in the employ of the Eclipse Film Company.

Clara was known to be very jealous of her husband and they quarreled often – usually because she was accusing him of infidelity. When neighborhood gossip hinted at a love affair between Armour and the attractive young widow, Clara had a mission – remove her rival by any means necessary.

Fabricating a story of needing transportation to her sister’s house, Clara and her friend Peggy Caffee caught a ride with the unsuspecting Alberta. At some point during the drive Clara asked Alberta to pull over for a private conversation…moments later Peggy witnessed Clara viciously beating Alberta with a hammer, and then smashing her with a rock.

After bludgeoning and mutilating Mrs. Meadows, Clara went home and announced to her husband that she had killed the woman who was stealing his love. She then told him that she was going to cook him the best dinner he’d ever had because she was so happy.

Armour helped her to escape on the morning following the brutal crime. He then went to police and told them everything. Clara was arrested in Tucson, Arizona on a train bound for El Paso, Texas.

Clara’s defense team engaged five alienists (psychiatrists) who testified that the hammer wielding twenty-three year old woman had the mental capacity of an eight year old child, and that she was also susceptible to epileptic fits, which could account for her violent rages. Apparently epilepsy was a viable murder defense in 1922.

Peggy Caffee Clara gave her version of events from the witness stand. She said that it was her friend Peggy who had struck the fatal blow. The homicidal charmer had been at a loss to explain the bruising to her hands and the fingernail scratches covering her arms and legs – even so, public opinion began to sway in her favor.

Evidently some of the jurors were convinced by her story because during their deliberations they became deadlocked. Most of the eight men voted for acquittal, three of the four women voted for hanging. The jurors reached a compromise decision, finding Clara guilty of second degree murder. Clara called her conviction an “unfair deal”.

On December 5, 1922 she escaped from the county jail by cutting the bars of her cell, hoisting herself to the roof of the building and then shimmying down a drainpipe. At least that was the story for publication. She was aided by a Mr. Jesse Carson whose motives for assisting her remain uncertain. Self-described adventurer and South American revolutionary, Carson was more likely to have been a cattle thief and small time grifter. In any case Clara and Jesse made their way to Mexico where she was reunited with her younger sister Etta Mae Jackson, and the threesome then headed off to Tegucigalpa, Honduras.

There were dozens of Tiger Girl sightings from Mexico to Wyoming. None of them panned out. After being on the loose for over four months, a tip that Clara was in Honduras led police to her hideout and she was finally arrested and returned to the U.S. She was taken directly to San Quentin and incarcerated.

Following her capture, she claimed that she had been the victim and that her so-called escape was actually a kidnapping. According to Clara, Carson had forced her to flee her cell at gun point. Carson was never held to answer for his part in Clara’s escape.

Ultimately she would serve twelve years in prison, losing some of her good time when it was revealed that she and a male convict were exchanging graphic love notes.

She filed for a divorce from Armour in 1938. She said she intended to remarry, but would not divulge the name of her husband-to-be. She moved to the east coast and vanished from public view.

Another Accepted Invite

accused

luring August 19, 1927
Los Angeles

anna All the noir hallmarks here: a destitute, starry-eyed country girl, the shifty grifter she befriends, a rube with some dough in his pocket, a classic con, the crummy apartment hotel and a dark city.

Anna Karrick, 22, ran away from her Illinois farm home to win fame in pictures, but found herself down and out.

At a dance, she met a nice guy, Phillip Linker, of 1327 West Fourth Street. She persuaded him to come back to her anna place at 532 South Fremont Avenue (one imagines it didn’t take all that much persuasion). Once there, in the hallway, thoughts of ingress dancing in Linker’s head, he is brained by a rolling-pin, wielded by one Jess F. Waller. Linker wakes up in a taxicab, lightened of seven dollars and other valuables.

Waller and Karrick are thrown into County and charged with robbery and ADW. Anna told the court today about her relationship with Waller, sure, but denied knowing he’d be there with her rolling-pin.

Sadly the Times didn’t see the need to print the trial’s outcome, and because there’s no Anna Karrick listed in imdb, we must sadly assume she never broke through Hollywood’s gates.

532 532 South Fremont (now site of Glossy Black Tower, left) may be long gone, but it was a fun place while it lasted. In May 1929, Filipino nationals Cal Blanco and Ceferino Sandries argued over women with some sailors from the USS Colorado, when Blanco announced, “I’m going to kill all you sailors,” and so sailor Clyde Forehand shot them both dead; July of 1929 saw a riot there involving thirty sailors and six women, at which two women and seven men were booked on suspicion of robbery; Jack Wilson and Clark Falcon, leaders of a gang of automobile plunderers, were arrested with their booty here in February, 1932; in September 1935 Robert Honchell, a 25 year-old taxi driver, was having a drinking party with his pal Edward Folder, a 29 year-old unemployed café worker, when a woman showed up with her infant daughter—Folder’s insistence on taking the child out for candy started a quarrel, and Folder ended up stabbed mortally in the chest by Honchell…you get the idea.

Ghastly

August 8, 1927

Los Angeles

Today, 17-year-old Paul Daedler was committed to the Preston School of Industry at Ione on vagrancy charges, and sentenced to remain there until he is 21. It sounds harsh, until you dig a little deeper.

You see, at the tender age of 14, Paul Daedler was accused of one of the grisliest crimes in Pasadena history. Paul came from a good family, but it was reported that he attended the Monroe School for Subnormal Children along with his friend, William "Billie" Forrester. William was adopted, and had been in trouble with the law since he was 12, when he stole $500 from a neighbor and ran off to Arizona.

After school on December 5, 1923, Paul and William were playing with 5-year-old Arthur Martinez, the youngest child of a Pasadena gardener, in an abandoned factory at 950 S. Raymond Ave. They had a loaded .22 with them. Exactly what happened in the factory is uncertain, but little Arthur was shot twice in the head and once in the back. The shots didn’t kill him, though. Scared that Arthur would squeal on them, Paul and William beat him over the head with a brick, tied him to a pole with wire, and left him overnight. When they came back to the factory the next day, (to free him, they said), the boy was dead.

Paul and William went to the police and reported that they "found" Arthur in the factory. However, the police were suspicious of the boys, and after questioning, both confessed. At the inquest, the two expressed little emotion or remorse for what they had done, though the truant officer sitting near them in the courtroom had them shaking in their boots.

On December 20 hearing, Paul was joined by two lawyers, his parents, sisters, and a bevy of witnesses, while William had only his mother by his side. Although Paul had signed two confessions of guilt, his lawyers called witnesses to establish Paul’s alibi for the time of the killing. Paul also stated that he’d attended school on December 5, then rode his bicycle to a confirmation class at his church. The pastor of Paul’s church testified that Paul had been in class, although his schoolteacher, Miss Anna Crane, said that she had not seen Paul after 2pm on the day of the murder.

William was sent to the Preston State School on his 15th birthday to await trial, while Paul was sent to the Whittier State School. Their names and school ID numbers are included in the California Youth Authority Name Index for 1924 . However, a month after being sentenced to Ione, William produced a confession that absolved Paul of all blame in the killing. In his confession, William said, "I pulled the gun and shot him. Then I though I would put the blame on someone else, so I shot him two more times. I happened to think that whenever Paul Daedler got mad, he always threw bricks, so I decided to throw bricks at Arthur so it would appear that Paul hit him."

Later, it was revealed that a person interested in the case of Paul Daedler had visited him at the Preston School earlier and persuaded him to change his confession. The possibility that Paul’s family pressured the poor and unconnected William to take the rap for his friend is not unthinkable. As the boys sat in juvenile facilities, the Daedler family and their lawyers sought a writ of habeas corpus on behalf of Paul, saying that he had been confined to Whittier without a trial before a jury.

The judge upheld Paul’s detention.

Finally, after serving 17 months at Whittier, Paul was released into the custody of a judge, who ruled that the boy must leave the state, never to return. Paul’s father, Louis Daedler took him east so he could begin a new life. However, less than two years later, Paul was in County Jail on a vagrancy charge, having hitchhiked his way back to California. And today, he was returned to the juvenile facility. If the case did come to trial at some point, it was not reported in the Times.

Paul Daedler died in Los Angeles on December 21, 1981. William Forrester was paroled from the Preston School on November 19, 1925, and disappeared without a trace.

Cough Syrup Fiend

June 22, 1927
Los Angeles

Ranch dweller Grace Haynes was in divorce court today, seeking her freedom from husband Amos on grounds of extreme cruelty.

He didn’t abuse her, per se, but she claimed to be terrorized by his habit of knocking back bottles of high-octane cough syrup, after which he’d commence to ranting and raving before wandering out to the pig pen and beating holy hell out of their swine herd. And that can’t be good for the pork chops.

Amos denied the accusation, countering that he’d be happy to take Grace back if she’d just stop running around all night. A fascinated Judge Bowron continued the case to hear more the next morning, but the papers failed to report if Amos was delusional or Grace an imaginative liar, and whether or not the pigs turned up seeking damages.

Sooooo-ey!

Brute Jealousy

May 31, 1927
Venice

If you needed proof of how the world has changed in 80 years, you need look no further than the news stories surrounding the police search for and arrest of Joe Hordeman, "elderly" war veteran and pipe murder suspect, and of Hordeman’s "December" romance with divorcee Victoria Woods, who he met at an "old folks dance" at the Sawtelle veteran’s home in late 1925.

Hordeman was enamored of Mrs. Woods and hoped to marry or go into business with her, but she found other men more fascinating. She enjoyed dancing, something Hordeman was not inclined to do with her, despite their initial meeting place. Recently she had befriended Emma O’Bell, who became her roommate and encouraged her friend’s active romantic life.

Hordeman couldn’t stand it. He bought a lead pipe and went to Mrs. Woods’ home at 109 Brooks Avenue when he thought two of her suitors would be in attendance. But he found only Mrs. Woods and Mrs. O’Bell, sitting on the porch. Incensed, he asked Mrs. Woods to go inside where they could discuss his concerns, and a raving argument erupted. Hordeman pulled out his pipe and beat her unconscious, then took a knife and neatly cut her Achilles tendons to ensure she would never dance again. He needn’t have bothered save for the symbolism; she died of her injuries. Mrs. O’Bell saw the attack through the window and rushed inside, and was herself badly beaten. Saved from injury was Mrs. Woods’ daughter, who had gone to Chicago the morning of the slaying to speak with her father about her parents reuniting.

The whole horrible affair was witnessed by 15-year-old neighbor Catherine Franklin through her kitchen window, but the dishwashing girl was so traumatized that she did not immediately cry out, and the killer walked down the alley and escaped. He turned himself in the next day after registering at a Los Angeles hotel and mistakenly crossing the d in Ford, when he had meant to use the pseudonym Fort; he was convinced this error would lead to his quick arrest. At his trial in August, Hordeman, who had once claimed he dare not confess lest "the Klan" kill him for harming Mrs. Woods, suddenly changed his plea to guilty after Mrs. O’Bell testified, and was sentenced to one year to life in San Quentin.

The decrepit Hordeman was variously reported as being 52, 60 or 62, old lady Mrs. Woods 55.