downtown – Page 5 – 1947 Project

Don’t &#*% With the Librarian

These days, if you make off with a stack of library materials, the Los Angeles Public Library will report your thieving name to a collections agency. But library bandits of yesteryear like 20-year-old Clyde M. Thompson faced much stiffer penalties.

A librarian at LAPL noticed that the copy of Eugene O’Neill’s controversial play All God’s Chillun Got Wings was at large, and traced the missing copy to Thompson. About 30 library books were found in Thompson’s home at 1406 E. 110th St., and he was sentenced to 60 days in jail, 2 days for each stolen book.

samuelwardlaw During the 1920s, the Los Angeles Public Library employed detectives to investigate thefts and mutilation of library material. A 1929 Times article featured the efforts of Special Investigator Samuel Wardlaw, a man as hardcore as he was humorless.

He interrogated patrons in the stacks when he observed them hiding books, and once used a sorority pin to track down a young woman who tried to sneak a rare volume of Chaucer out under her coat. While he seemed to have a soft spot in his heart for the children he captured, Wardlaw regarded most library patrons with a certain degree of contempt. He said, "Sometimes I think the Los Angeles Public Library must be on the mailing or calling list of every crank and eccentric in the West."

While the library detectives frequently visited people at home to reclaim stolen books, it was rare that criminal charges were pursued. No particular reason was given for poor Clyde Thompson’s exceptionally harsh sentence.

Come on Vacation, Leave on Probation

Come on Vacation Headline

October 1, 1927
Los Angeles

Police will be working twelve hour shifts until the men who robbed the Merchant’s National Trust and Savings Bank, at Fifty-Seventh Street and South Broadway, of $5000 ($59,746.26 USD 2007) are in taken into custody.

During the brazen daylight robbery, six unmasked bandits threatened more than forty bank employees and depositors with shot-guns and revolvers.

Witnesses told officers that the gunmen drew up behind the bank in a large, expensive black sedan. Five men piled out of the car and walked to the front of the building, while the driver of the getaway car pulled around and parked right in front of the bank doors. Bank interior

Waving a shotgun, the first crook entered the bank. He made no attempt to halt several terrified bank patrons as they ran screaming from the bank seeking safety.

One of the men stood lookout on the sidewalk, while the remaining thieves rushed into the bank lobby brandishing their weapons and shouting at everyone to hold up their hands. Bank manager R.C. Elliott was struck by one of the gunmen and forced to lie on the floor. The other employees were unmolested, and the customers were not robbed. Two of the crooks jumped behind the counter and forced the tellers to lie on the floor. The men then pointed their weapons at the prone employees, and proceeded to empty the cash drawers. Having made their withdrawal, the gang fled to the waiting automobile which then careened north down Broadway at a high rate of speed.

One of the tellers, W. Ord, raced to his car and followed the fleeing bandits several blocks before losing sight of them in traffic at Forty-Sixth Street and South Broadway. He managed to obtain the license number of the car, which had been reported as stolen only a few nights ago.

Police have concluded from the gang’s modus operandi that they are from the east, and not among the locals currently wreaking havoc in a city-wide crime wave. The law won’t rest until the miscreants are brought to justice. So…if the bad guys are here on vacation, they’d better pick up a Hollywood snow globe and a crate of oranges, and head for home.

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.

Robber Queen

Robber Queen Headline

September 24, 1927 Patricia Sullivan
Los Angeles

What’s wrong with the dames in this town? When they aren’t powdering and painting their faces, they’re at petting parties, drinking in blind pigs, or dancing the night away doing the black bottom or the kinkajou. Now it seems that they are also morphing into gun molls. According to police, several female stick-up artists are currently menacing Los Angeles residents, and at least two of them are red-heads.

With so many women bandits prowling the streets and preying on the unwary, competition for the title of Robber Queen is fierce…the most recent contender for the crown is Patricia Sullivan, aged 23. Miss Sullivan and a male companion were taken into custody by Officers Reid and Garner in front of her apartment building at Tenth and Western.

Patricia was transported to the county jail where she was booked on suspicion of robbery. Her accomplice has been identified as 27 year old shoe salesman, Alvarado Contreras, of 1132 West Thirty-First Street. The two have avowed their innocence but Miss Sullivan closely resembles the description of the lady crook given to police, from her toes right up to her auburn tresses.

Detective Lieutenant Smith and Captain Kallmeyer of Wilshire Division are arranging for the victims of Her Royal Heistness to come to down to the station to positively identify her as the woman who terrorized them.

Patricia’s reign as Robber Queen was short-lived…she was only Queen for a Day.

Death Train

September 20, 1927
Los Angeles

We don’t know why high school student Albert A. Benavides of 1139 East 55th Street was saving car fare by clinging to the outside of the rail car rather than buying a ticket. Maybe he had a date and wanted to buy her a cream soda, or was obsessively collecting pulp magazines, or simply couldn’t afford the fare. What we do know is that at Santa Barbara Street and Vermont Avenue, his skull connected with a telephone pole and he fell beneath the car, where his legs were neatly severed. It was a horror for the passengers, one of whom leapt from the window and extricated the youth. Taken to Georgia Street Receiving Hospital, his smashed limbs were amputated. They think he’ll live.

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.

The Killer on Page Six

September 3, 1927 Marmola
Los Angeles

Not all crimes are reported on the front page – and not all criminals are gun toting bandits. It may seem like a slow news day, but lurking on page six of the Los Angeles Times was this innocent looking advertisement for the diet drug Marmola. In the future the drug will be exposed as a possible killer!

Let’s hop into the time machine and travel to 1938… The public was fed up with products that promised the world, but delivered illness, disfigurement, and death. A Senate subcommittee was formed to investigate the outrageous claims of some over the counter medications. Following the subcommittee’s recommendations, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act on June 25, 1938.

Attorneys for Marmola challenged the constitutionality of the law. They insisted that people had the, “inalienable right of self-medication”. The judge who reviewed the case disagreed stating that the legislation was enacted to, “make self-medication safer and more effective”. Marmola toned down its claims but remained on the market. Finally in the early 1940s the FDA, believing the drug to be dangerous, seized dozens of packets while they were in transit to La Crosse, Wisconsin. The drug went on trial in Madison, Wisconsin in 1943.

fat girls A young woman from Chicago came forward with a horror story that left courtroom watchers in tears. She told the judge that she had purchased Marmola because she was tired of her weight being the subject of cruel taunts by her classmates. Her excess pounds began to melt away, but she had also developed some nasty side effects. She hadn’t known that she was taking desiccated thyroid in toxic amounts. By the end of seven months she was vomiting regularly and her weight would eventually plummet to a cadaverous 50 pounds! At the time of the trial she was deathly ill with persistent symptoms of hyperthyroidism.

Due in large part to the girl’s testimony, Marmola was finally pulled from drugstore shelves.

Diet elixirs such as Marmola aren’t quaint artifacts of bygone days. Just spend any Saturday morning watching today’s television infomercials hawking diet drugs and quack devices, each promising to transform you from a flabby couch potato to a sculpted body beautiful.

Caveat emptor.

Have a Zesty Labor Day!

September 3, 1927
Los Angeles

If you’re planning to escape the heat this Labor Day by going boating on Lake Arrowhead, don’t forget to take along your radio!

Radio

A Good Man is Hard to Find

A Good Man Headline

August 20, 1927
Malibu

In this case “A Good Man is Hard to Find” is not a reference to Flannery O’Connor’s allegorical tale of good and evil, faith and redemption – no, we are talking about finding a good man, one who won’t desert his date on a quiet stretch of highway at the first sign of trouble, escorting her safely to her home instead.

Thelda Gollett, of 456 Westminster Avenue, and Arthur Israel of 756 1/2 South San Pedro Street, were taking a relaxing drive in the Los Flores Canyon area when a man stepped out onto the roadway waving a revolver, and ordered them to stop. Upon seeing the bandit Thelda jumped from the car and started to run, with the gun wielding crook only a few yards behind her.

Rather than stay and protect his date, Arthur spun his car around and screeched off in the direction of Los Angeles.

Arthur wouldn’t learn of Thelda’s fate until after she had returned home unscathed. She reported to police that she hidden beneath a bridge until the highwayman disappeared. Once the coast was clear she was rescued by a passing truck – driven by a good man.

We suspect that this was the couple’s last date. Maybe Thelda will keep company with that chivalrous truck driver.

Guess Who…

Guess Who Headline

August 20, 1927
Los Angeles

Esther and Wilber Ebermayer weren’t playing a silly children’s game when Esther called out “Guess Who” – she was reading the inscription from the back of a small photograph she had found tucked inside of her husband’s watch case. Guess Who Pic

Esther had expected to find her own picture in the case so she was surprised, hurt, and angry when she discovered the coyly inscribed photo of an unknown woman smiling back at her.

Friends to whom Wilber had shown the photo informed Esther that he had been describing the woman as his future bride – once he’d managed to rid himself of his current ball and chain.

The wronged wife immediately sought a divorce from her faithless husband. “Well,” she told Judge Sproul, “if that’s the way he feels about it, he is rid of me right now as far as I’m concerned”.

Memo to Wilber: buy yourself a wristwatch.