Category: Kim Cooper

Mother Tells Plight of Self and Sandy

July 17, 1947
Los Angeles

On July 7, a pretty blonde woman came to the home of Mrs. Marie J. Crow, 344 W. 82nd Street, to inquire about the classified ad she’d posted, offering a room for a mother and a child. With her was a little girl, around 4 ½ years of age. Mrs. Crow explained that the room had been rented, but she agreed to care for and board the child for $15 a week.

The blonde eagerly accepted the offer. She introduced herself as Toni, and explained that she and her daughter Sandy had just come from Seattle, that she was a cocktail waitress, separated from her husband, and that she had sold her house to finance an operation for the child, who was born blind but could now see. And if Mrs. Crow would just keep an eye on Sandy, she’d just go down to the post office and get some money-

And of course that was the last Mrs. Crow saw of Sandy’s mother. After a week, she phoned police, and Sandy was taken to Juvenile Hall as an abandoned child. A story in the Times about the little girl’s plight quickly rousted the errant mother, Mrs. Iona (Toni) DuBose, 30. She told reporters that she was broke and had no friends in Los Angeles, that Sandy was hungry, and she couldn’t stand to see the child suffer.

She’d come to town looking for her estranged husband, a barman by the name of James (Slim) DuBose, in hopes that he would pony up some cash for Sandy’s eye treatments-astigmatism had made her blind from birth until an operation last fall. Since leaving Mrs. Crow’s house, Toni had found a bar girl’s gig at a café on Main Street, and had rented a hotel room.

After interviewing the mother, Juvenile Officer Alice Owen said, “This woman needs help more than punishment,” and declined to file charges. The case is being turned over to County Probation for hearing and disposition.

Suggested reading: Desperate Journeys, Abandoned Souls : True Stories of Castaways and Other Survivors by Edward E. Leslie

Woman Dies After Police Get Kin Suicide’s Note

July 16, 1947
Lincoln Heights

Visiting the in-laws can be such a drag. But there’s no excuse for behaving like the late Raymond Scott did during his stay with Mrs. Eva Utzinger, 74-year-old mother of Scott’s widow Lucille.

The Scotts were on vacation at the Utzinger home, 368 S. Ave. 21, when Eva turned up with a broken skull at the foot of the outside stairs leading into the cellar. Detectives found a red-stained hatchet in the cellar, and turned it over to the lab to see if the stains were blood.

Also nearby, an unsigned note in Scott’s handwriting. “I must end the source of trouble in this house. You know whom I mean. I find I cannot escape a breakdown. And so, I am jumping from the N. Broadway Bridge. You have been a wonderful family. Here is insurance to get you well.”

Scott, who was 60, and a schoolteacher at Taft, was indeed found gravely injured at the base of the Broadway and Pasadena Avenue bridge. He died at Hollywood Presbyterian. Lucille confirmed that both she and her son had been ill.

Suggested listening: Reckless Nights & Turkish Twilights by the other Raymond Scott

Hot Rod Boys Spend Afternoon in Court

July 15, 1947
Compton

Compton Justice Court Justice Harry R. Simon spent this afternoon lecturing twenty fidgety, t-shirt and jeans-clad youngsters on how very, very, very naughty it was that they had turned a local street into a hot rod race track last July 8. All were caught when local police blockaded the street and snared the drivers.

Fines ranging from $2 to $5 were levied on 9 of the boys, and all were charged for having defective gear on their cars, with a requirement that they produce evidence of repair. “If we catch you racing your hot rods in Compton again,” said Justice Simon,” I am going to throw you all in jail. You had better behave yourselves, because we’re not going to have that kind of driving in this town.”

suggested reading: Hot Rod Pin-ups by David Perry (intro by Robert Williams)

Broken Marriage Ends in Slaying, Suicide Try

July 13, 1947
Los Angeles

When Mrs. Dorothea Lee, 35, left husband Horace last May 9, she might have thought she was rid of him. But Horace wasn’t finished with Dorothea. Last night, there were noises in the backyard of 559 W. 90th Street, disturbing the dog. Dorothea’s parents were visiting from Portland, so her father, George C. Brooks, went out to see what it was. He was promptly felled by three shots to the head. Dorothea and her mother saw Horace standing over him and ran to a neighbor’s to call the police. Then they went back to the house (ah, such innocent times). There on the living room floor with a bullet in the head, the estranged Horace. Brooks died on the scene, but his son-in-law lingers. They’ve moved him to the prison ward at General Hospital for now, and if he lives will do what they can to kill him.

suggested reading: Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye by Horace McCoy

Woman Shot as She Sits on Bus-Stop Bench

July 12, 1947
Los Angeles

Was it shame, pride or loss of blood that made Dorothy Hawkins, 24-year-old waitress, half-rise from her General Hospital bed to grit her teeth and insist the man (tall, slim, 20s, brown suit) who shot her as she sat on a bus bench at Wilshire and Vermont was a stranger? And the stranger was polite. After shooting her, he said “I am sorry that happened. I’ll go and call and ambulance.”

But when police visited Miss Hawkins’ apartment at 1214 W. 8th Street, they found the door smashed in. Neighbor Frances Darby described a man busting it down, arguing with Hawkins, and leaving with some boxes not long before the 2:30am shooting.

Former Folsom prisoner Aubrey Jones, 26, was raised on the horn and asked to come down to the station. He admitted he’d spent some time with Miss Hawkins, but declined to meet officers as requested. A bulletin was issued for his arrest.

Meanwhile, the lady has less than a 50% chance of surviving. Gut shots are tricky that way.

suggested reading: Fast Food : Roadside Restaurants in the Automobile Age … or pre-order Kevin Roderick’s Wilshire Boulevard: Grand Concourse of Los Angeles
(out next month)

Soya Sauce Poison Tests Stir Seizure


July 11, 1947
Los Angeles

The war is over-so who is trying to poison the Japanese-American citizens of Little Tokyo? Forty people took ill two nights ago, and the cause was quickly found to be near-fatal quantities of arsenic adulterating the strange salty black soya sauce of which that population is so fond. In what seems to be an ingenious targeted attack-which has thus far failed to kill anyone, because the parts per pound were 2.3 grains instead of 2.7-at least one brand of soya sauce proved potentially life-threatening.

Not taking chances, city and state health department workers cooperated with officers of the Pure Food and Drug Bureau of the U.S. Department of Agriculture to seize some 8000 gallons of soya sauce throughout the southland. And while there have been no deaths, Captain Jack Donohoe of the police homicide department is on the case.

All roads lead first to the Staley Manufacturing Company (Decatur, Illinois), which ships soya sauce out to the coast for repackaging by local dealers. Representatives of the firm insist that there’s no way such large quantities of arsenic entered the food chain on their end-so the question becomes, at which local bottler did the deadly powder find its way into the dark and highly-flavored medium?

suggested reading: The Whole Soy Story : The Dark Side of Americas Favorite Health Food

Woman Says She Booked Bets, but Only as Favor to Friends


July 9, 1947
Hollywood

It’s a friend indeed who sits around the house all day, taking horse-race bets from her buddies and passing ‘em along to a real bookie, for nothing but the joy of helping out.

This is the happy task claimed by Mrs. Kleo Marie Prince, 43, of 1737 N. Whitley Ave. While the perfectly-named officers G.F. Tillett and D.J. Lightfoot, who raided their apartment, report that Kleo and hubby Edmond, 38, Hollywood Boulevard shoe store owner, were both heard taking bets, and that they tossed the slips out the window when the cops busted in.

Mais no! says Kleo. Edmond was just home for a little lunch, and knew nothing of her hobby. Superior Court Judge Walter S. Gates evidently found this a convincing explanation-aquitting the husband while convicting the missus on a charge of bookmaking.

And not for the first time in these pages, I wish my great-grandpa Louis Prupis was still around. He had a shoe store on Hollywood Boulevard around this time, and was a betting man. I’m quite certain he had the dirt on the Princes and their little Whitley Flats operation.

suggested reading: Love Me, Love My Bookie: A Novel About Gambling and Marriage

Slain Woman’s Stripped Body Found in Gutter

July 8, 1947
Lincoln Heights

It was 1:00 am when the divorce papers came, informing Antonio Mondragon, sheet metal worker of 1925 ½ Gates Street that his four-year marriage to Rosenda, 20, was ending. Of course, it was no surprise-she’d moved out of the house she shared with Antonio and her sister, Mrs. Trinidad Vigil, two months previously, and was living at 826 S. Crocker Street.

So the papers were served, and then about an hour later Rosenda herself appeared-drunk, said Antonio. They argued, and she left. Antonio followed, and saw his wife get into a car.

Or did she? William Moore, market clerk, says a woman matching Rosenda’s description called a cab from his store (location: N. Main and Mission Road) around 2:15am, telling the dispatcher she wanted a ride to San Pedro and 9th Street (a block from her home). But a car came by before the cab did, and the lady thumbed a ride with a husky blondish fellow in a dark coupe.

Flash forward a couple of hours to the early dawn, when mail clerk Newton Josha finds a gruesome package in a gutter on Elmyra Street near North Main: Rosenda Mondragon’s naked corpse, a silk stocking tightly tied around her throat. No signs of sexual attack. The likelihood that she had been killed elsewhere and pushed from a moving car.

Officers promptly gave Antonio a lie detector test, found his story at odds with his nosy neighbors, and booked him on suspicion of murder at University Division Jail.

Was it a husband scorned? The Black Dahlia’s killer, making a more northerly assault? Or an entirely new threat to the women of Los Angeles, striking near the city’s heart with a still-warm victim dumped by the train yards just up the road from the halls of commerce and of law? And how drunk did one have to be to thumb a ride, with Liz Short’s killer still on the loose? Drunk enough so it didn’t hurt to die?

We can only hope so.

Wife Backs Up Mate She Says Fired At Her

July 7, 1947
Los Angeles

Who will ever understand the mind of a woman?

Nellie Robison was chased screaming from her home at 129 West Century Blvd. last night by husband Frank, 48-year-old welder. She was smart to run: Frank was firing .22-caliber bullets. Nellie found safety at a neighbor’s house, and cops finally rousted her old man after firing tear gas canisters (and gassing themselves on the upwind). Once Frank was cuffed, Nellie ran out and embraced him, calling him “Honey Boy,” and urging him to go along with the officers. Frank and his red-eyed captors adjourned to Georgia Street Receiving Hospital for eyewashes, and Frank was later booked at 77th Street Station on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon.

We’ll assume his sweet Nellie will be waiting when, and if, he gets out.