Jacob Adelman of the venerable AP rode along with the gang on the Blood & Dumplings Crime Bus Tour on St. Patrick’s Day, and produced a delightful little audio document of the day for the AP’s youth-oriented asap section. It includes an overview of the tour, some excerpted crime stories from the tour, and interviews with a few of the delightful passengers. Why would otherwise normal people choose to spend their Saturday hearing tales of mayhem and horror? Click slowly and see….
Category: Cities
Showroom New
March 24, 1927
Los Angeles
Investigators from the State Board of Pharmacy began traversing the city today, in search of physicians who illegally supplied narcotizing agents to Miss Minnie Hines. It seems that while under the spell of narcotics, Miss Hines develops a “maternity complex” which requires the purchase of infants. When her mind clears some days later, it then becomes necessary to farm them out again. Adding complexity to the case is the fact that due to her dope-addled brain, she rarely recollects the homes where she obtained or disposed of the babies. She is currently under Narcosan treatment for her affliction.
Los Angeles
Investigators from the State Board of Pharmacy began traversing the city today, in search of physicians who illegally supplied narcotizing agents to Miss Minnie Hines. It seems that while under the spell of narcotics, Miss Hines develops a “maternity complex” which requires the purchase of infants. When her mind clears some days later, it then becomes necessary to farm them out again. Adding complexity to the case is the fact that due to her dope-addled brain, she rarely recollects the homes where she obtained or disposed of the babies. She is currently under Narcosan treatment for her affliction.
Ms. Hines was arrested March 9th when she attempted to buy a baby at Pasadena hospital, and attempted to escape by putting pillows under her clothes and pretending she was an expectant mother. Hines, 26, of Long Beach, has farmed out three of her own children (ages eighteen months to twelve years) and an estimated ten others. Babies, incidentally, generally run between sixty and one hundred dollars ($700-$1,169 USD 2007).
In other baby news: local actress Lita Grey Chaplin today dropped her renewed bid for temporary alimony for herself and her two toddlers in an attempt to force her husband, one Charles Chaplin, into court. (Mr. Chaplin had impregnated Lita Grey when she was 16, he 35, resulting in a marriage and sensationally scandalous divorce which, when finalized in August of 1927, cost Chaplin $825,000 [$9,648,650 USD 2007].)
According to Charlie’s biographer Joyce Milton, the 1924 marriage was the inspiration of Nabokov’s Lolita.
Blood & Dumplings in the Pasadena Star-News
Why yes, Pasadenans, that was our own Nathan Marsak glowering out at you from page three of the Sunday paper, doing his little AH impression on the former site of the American Nazi Party Headquarters in deepest El Monte, as part of the Blood and Dumplings Crime Bus Tour. To read Molly R. Okean’s story, which oddly enough in the web version doesn’t feature Sarah Reingewirtz’ striking photograph, just click here.
We had a great day exploring the San Gabriel Valley with a bus full of charming passengers, including a stop for dumplings at Monster Park (sorry about the soy sauce shortage!), turn-of-the-century bungalow poetry from co-host Richard Schave, black cats crossing our paths and some truly chilling tales of forgotten crimes and misfortunes. Thanks to everyone who joined us, especially Sister Kelly and Brother Nathan, and watch this space for announcements of upcoming tours, criminal and otherwise.
Postcards From the Past
The Hotel Green, Pasadena
The Bridge
March 15, 2007
South Pasadena
Here’s the Gold Line, its passengers mercifully unaware that they are zipping along to Pasadena in the “Gorge of Eternal Peril†beneath “The Bridge of Death.â€
Here’s a close-up of a patch made to fix one of the 1907 cracks in the bridge. And yes, the darn thing is still standing. Hm. Maybe I should call it “The Bridge of Hope†instead.
Lmharnisch.com
Lmharnisch.blogspot.com
E-mail: lmharnisch (AT) gmail.com
Belles Are Ringing
March 6, 2007
San Francisco (VIA Associated Press)
The Irish of San Francisco are furious over a play at the Davis Theater called “The Belle of Avenue A,†which features a character named Mrs. McCluskey who drinks a glass of beer in the first act.
“Three times, about 40 people charged the stage and the actors and actresses feared they were about to be attacked,†The Times says.
“Indignant because the woman’s part in the first act called for the drinking of a glass of beer, two score men, members of the Irish societies of this city, charged the stage and for half an hour refused to allow the play to go on.â€
The riot was reported to the police and the protesters were eventually thrown out of the theater.
Lmharnisch.com
Lmharnisch.blogspot.com
E-mail: lmharnisch (AT) gmail.com
Bonus shot:
Los Angeles, before the days of Google Earth, at the junction of Main Street, Spring Street and 9th Street, 1873.
But the Line Is Straight
Feb. 28, 1907
Los Angeles
An old and massive California live oak used to mark the division between three Spanish land grants lies in pieces on the ground because an Edison foreman refused to run a transmission line around it.
“The tree was a full hundred feet in its spread,†The Times says,†and stood on the end of a little plateau, all alone in its greatness. The massive trunk could not be circled by three men stretching their arms and touching their fingertips-hardly by four men. Above, it split into four great branches that spread out and out and then again downward, containing with an evergreen shield a refuge where two full companies of soldiers might have bivouacked in comfort.â€
The live oak marks the junction of the San Rafael, Los Feliz and Providencia land grants, The Times says, adding: “The tree itself stands within the Providencia but it was a starting point from which direction was taken.â€
“The foreman is said to be in grave danger of losing his position and is very repentant,†the paper says. “He bawled like a spanked bad boy before the board (note: the property was owned by the Water Board, which had given Edison permission to run the line). However the great old tree is lying among a smother of chips and there is no way to replace the work of nature’s 300 years.â€
Bonus fact: The San Rafael, Providencia and San Rafael land grants touched at a point in Burbank that is circled by the on-ramp for the southbound Golden State Freeway at the westbound lanes of Burbank Boulevard.
Lmharnisch.com
Lmharnisch.blogspot.com
E-mail: lmharnisch (AT) gmail.com
Blood & Dumplings Crime Bus Tour (March 17, 1pm-6pm)
If there’s one thing we at 1947project love even more than uncovering
evidence of an incredibly weird forgotten crime, it’s Chinese
food–especially dumplings! Whether fried or boiled, stuffed with
shrimp, pork, pumpkin, fish, scallions or sometimes a little dollop of
soup, nothing is more comforting and delicious.
With Blood & Dumplings, we’re combining our favorite things to bring
you the first new Crime Bus tour of 2007, a a grim and gleeful descent
into the criminal history of the San Gabriel Valley, including the battling Nazis of El Monte, the chilling (and probably incestuous) Case of the Buried Bride, missing Salvador Dali paintings, the dark history of the Lions Club’s lion meat BBQs held in eye- and nose-range of hundreds of the lovely beasts, the Man from Mars Bandit (his mystery revealed!), plus Phil Spector, neglected Manson victim Steve Parent, Geneva Ellroy and a peculiar East L.A. link to the JFK assassination, concealed Black Panthers and the coolest trailer parks in the Southland.
Included in the $55 ticket price is a special stop for Chinese comfort food at one of the best dumpling joints in Monterey Park and an afternoon picnic surrounded by real sea monsters.
Click here to buy your ticket by paypal, or email to reserve a seat that you will purchase with a money order or check.
We hope to see YOU on the Crime Bus!
your hosts,
Kim Cooper & Richard Schave
Skeet Shoot
Feb. 19, 1907
Los Angeles
A quick trip to the Thomas Bros. will show that Los Angeles County doesn’t look like this, but it’s not for lack of trying. The wealthy men of Los Angeles and Orange counties are furious with one another over an attempt by Assemblyman Phil Stanton to give Los Angeles County a strip of coastal communities as far south as Newport Beach.
The arguments in favor are simple: Los Angeles County money built those communities and Orange County is, at least as far as the Angelenos are concerned, poorly run.
The Orange County faction accuses its northern neighbors of a land grab and notes the distance people would have to travel to serve on juries, for example. The Orange County businessmen say wealthy Los Angeles members of the Bolsa Chica Gun Club are seeking revenge after losing a lawsuit in Santa Ana against local peat farmers who were hunting ducks in the area.
Bonus fact: The Times says that Los Angeles has abandoned its efforts to annex San Pedro. (For now, anyway).
The rising city: Brentwood.
Lmharnisch.com
Lmharnisch.blogspot.com
E-mail: lmharnisch (AT) gmail.com
Architectural Ramblings
Feb. 10, 1907
Los Angeles
The Times features a hillside home “near the ostrich farm” in Pasadena. Presumably that was the Cawston farm in South Pasadena. (What, South Pasadena, again?) Unfortunately, many of the homes in the city of Los Angeles photographed for The Times in 1907 have been torn down and replaced by parking lots, warehouses, etc. Not so in suburban South Pasadena.
lmharnisch.com
lmharnisch.blogspot.com
E-mail: lmharnisch (AT) gmail.com