Category: Poisoning

Angelenos Run Amuck in One Day Crime Spree!

July 30, 1927
Los Angeles and its crime ridden suburbs

This has been a mad, felony fueled day in the Southland, and there isn’t even a full moon! We have four tales of crime including a beating, triple poisoning, robbery and assault, and finally the murder of a policeman in Arcadia by three wayward youths. Read them at your leisure, or devour them all at once.

Mystery Girl

A severely beaten woman was dropped off at Culver City Hospital by three men, who then sped away. The victim’s identity has not been confirmed, but she is believed to be Vivian Edwards of 501 S. Rampart. The injured woman lapsed in and out of consciousness. Finally in a moment of lucidity, she said that she had been assaulted by a man named Dick Burk. No trace of her alleged assailant has been found. The young woman’s injuries are critical and it is feared that she may die.

 

 

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Trio Poisoned

In Glendale, a wealthy couple, Mr. and Mrs. Leroy Armstrong and their nurse, Mrs. M. Woolf, are recovering in the Armstrong’s home at 1311 Rossmoyne, after having been poisoned with arsenic. The couple’s servant, Ray Tayama, is being sought in connection with the crime. The missing domestic had been discharged by Mr. Armstrong earlier in the afternoon, and as a farewell gesture Tayama served the three people coffee laced with arsenic and then vanished.

 

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Are these the only cases from the police blotter today? Don’t be ridiculous! The mayhem continues…

Wife Hovers

Ex-con and bail jumper Paul Knapp spent the day in the arms of his lovely wife Josephine, while she tenderly patted his cheek and vociferouslyPaul Knapp declared his innocence of robbery and assault. Josephine may be confident that her husband is guiltless of the charges against him, but his record speaks persuasively to a life of crime.

Paul was a cop in Seattle from 1919 until 1923 when he was dismissed for being absent without leave, refusal to obey orders, and for participating in a liquor hi-jacking. He was busted in Los Angeles in 1924 for attacking a woman, but he fled before he could be tried. By 1925 he was in Portland doing fifteen months in McNeil Island Federal pen for impersonating a Federal officer.

In April of this year, after vowing to shoot it out with the law, he was cornered by police and wounded in the shoulder. He was booked on suspicion of robbery and as a fugitive from justice. As if those charges weren’t enough, he was also wanted in Seattle for jumping bail and in Portland for violation of the Mann Act!

Earlier this month, a court order allowed the bandit to be released into the custody of two deputy sheriffs so that he could visit a dentist – whose office was conveniently located across the street from his mother’s house. Paul asked his custodians if he could be allowed to use the bathroom at his mother’s place. The police acquiesced, and once inside the Josephine Knapphouse the bandit’s cagey spouse and his wily mother engineered his escape through a trap door in the closet of the home, while the clueless officers continued to wait for him outside!

Following his escape, Paul and Josephine reunited and hid out in a small apartment at 1057 South New Hampshire which had been rented for them by an accomplice known to police. On a hunch, Detective Lieutenant Hull of the Central Police Station investigated and found Paul and his wife at the apartment. The couple’s crime partner is being hunted.

Paul’s mother and his wife have been accused of conspiracy for engineering his Houdini-like escape. A glimpse into the future finds Paul sentenced to from sixteen years to life in the state pen. His mother and his wife will seek probation, but no word if they’ll be successful.

 

 

 

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Had enough crime yet? Neither have we…

Police Slaying

Our final story for this summer day in July of 1927 is a tale of flaming youth and flaming guns! Frank Miller

Under arrest for car theft and the murder of Arcadia police officer Alfred Mathias are: Frank Miller, 18 years of age, 820-1/2 West Third Street, accused of the actual slaying; Ray Oddell, 18, Fourth and Beaudry streets, confessed driver of the get away car and Miller’s accuser. Also in custody is William Montfort, 21, 903 West Fifty-ninth Drive who admitted to have been along for the ride, but claimed to be ignorant of his two companion’s hold-up plans.

Ray OddellThe three boys have been friends since meeting in the State reform school at Ione. Both Oddell and Montfort credit Miller with being the brains of the outfit and insist it was he who formed the plan to rob a barbeque stand in Arcadia, which resulted in the shooting death of Officer Alfred Mathias.

The boys were sitting in the stolen automobile when they were approached by Officer Mathias. The cop asked Oddell for the car’s registration. Miller spoke from the back seat and told the officer he had the pink slip. Mathias thought the young man was acting suspiciously and asked “what are you sitting on?” Frank whipped out his gun and demanded that the officer “stick ‘em up”. Mathias bolted and headed for the rear of the car as Frank fired, leaving the policeman dead in the parking lot. William Montfort

Set the time machine for two months hence; September 1927. Frank Miller will plead guilty to murder and auto theft and will be found guilty. He’ll be lucky. The jury will recommend that the youth not hang, but rather spend one year to life in San Quentin. Frank’s partners in crime Ray Oddell and William Montfort, will face similar fates.

 

The flaming youths burned out…and so have we! What a day!

“Death Dinner” — the Dinner That Killed!

deathdinner
 
July 25, 1927
Glendale 
 
On the evening of July 6, 1927, Glendale inventor John H. Carson settled down to a dinner of stew and strawberry preserves with his wife and business colleagues.  Around 10 that evening, he complained of severe pain, became faint, and began to perspire profusely.  He eventually slipped into a coma and died on July 11.

Initially, the cause of death was ruled as heart disease, but Carson’s widow insisted that he’d been in excellent health before sampling her cooking.  The circumstances were indeed strange, and Mrs. Carson was insistent enough that an autopsy was performed.

 
visceraToday, Dr. A.F. Wagner, county autopsy surgeon announced that a quantity of arsenic had been found in Carson’s viscera.  An inquest was ordered, with Mrs. Carson and J.E. Walker, Carson’s business partner appearing as key witnesses.  And of course, the Times gave the whole thing a clever name, just in case the story had legs.

At the inquest on July 26, Mrs. Carson testified that J.E. Walker, her husband’s business partner, had given her a box of candy and a bunch of bananas, which she’d feared to be poisoned.  Walker was outraged at the suggestion, saying that since he stood to make 50% off of the oil pump Carson had been developing, it was certainly in his best interests for Carson to remain alive.  Then, a bit cruelly, he added that he’d given Mrs. Carson a reducing recipe along with the candy because he thought she was "too fat."  Then again, the woman had all but called him a murderer, so I guess he was entitled to a little snippiness.

 
Walker was also asked whether he’d hoped to get Carson out of the way so he could marry his widow.  Walker icily declared that he already had a wife, and had no desire to marry Mrs. Carson.

Oddly, Carson said that she’d wrapped up the candy and bananas, given them back to Walker, and told him to burn the parcel in his incinerator without telling him what it contained.  When asked why she’d done this, Carson said that she hadn’t wanted the parcel littering up her kitchen.

Though there was certainly something fishy about this case, investigators were unable to piece together enough evidence to prove a murder had taken place, and the inquest was closed on July 29, 1927, less than a week after it was opened.  In fact, just about the only thing that was established was that Carson had most likely NOT committed suicide or consumed the arsenic accidentally by drinking from an irrigation ditch near an oil well.  Just how 40 grains of arsenic got into his belly remains a mystery. 

The Mad Gasser of… Fullerton?

June 28, 1927
Fullerton

Scholars of the unexplained in America will be familiar with the legend of the Mad Gasser of Mattoon, a possibly imaginary figure who gassed his way across two communities over a decade and thence into the spooky books.

But we’ve found a precedent in the Los Angeles area that beats the first Mad Gasser attacks by six years! This very evening, garage operator Alois Sabinski was asleep in his home at 111 North Nicholas Street when his wife was roused by the distinctive odor of chloroform, and discovered her husband in a swoon. The clever lady threw open all the windows to disperse the poison before she too was rendered insensible, and peeked outside to see a man running away carrying what looked like a bicycle pump. A bicycle pump of doom!

Officer Roy Mills, called to the scene, found footprints under the window and on the porch, and evidence that the gasser had launched his fumes through the open transom. So close those transoms, kids, and beware strange men bearing pumps.

Daddy’s Little Girl

June 6, 1927
Hollywood

hollywoodfilmbrideAnother high-profile suicide today in Los Angeles.  Helen St. Claire Evens, the wife of writer and former bucket shop operator, Arthur Frederick St. Claire Evens ended her life by swallowing a quantity of antiseptic lotion following a domestic quarrel.

The Evens’s had quarreled a few nights earlier, and were encouraged by a friend of the family to cool their tempers at the Hollywood Police Station.  Captain Charles Knowles spoke with Arthur and Helen, then sent the seemingly reconciled couple home.  Today, Knowles was summoned to the Evens’s house at 2235 N. Cahuenga Dr. on a report that Helen had attempted suicide.  When he arrived, he found her dead on the bathroom floor.  Arthur had been working on a scenario for a new film when Helen asked him to take her to a motion picture theater.  Engrossed in his work, he refused, and Helen retreated to the bathroom where she consumed the poison.

Police were prepared to declare it a suicide until they received a wire from Albert T. Daniels, the father of the deceased woman, asking if there was anything suspicious about the death, and did they have anything on which to hold Evens?  Apparently, he had disapproved of the marriage, claiming to police that Evens had been previously married and that he had served time in prison for shady business dealings in New York City.  And Helen had seemed happy enough.  Just days prior to her death, she’d written an upbeat letter to her mother saying, "We want to make a success of life, to have a nice home, a few friends (real ones), and an unquestionable position in life."

Evens was further questioned, but his statement was not in doubt, and police had no basis for a charge to hold him.  Then Daniels switched his tactics, wiring that "frequent threats to kill Helen" had been made when she lived in New York.  An inquest was ordered; however, reports from both the police and the coroner maintained that all evidence was consistent with suicide, and custody of the body was granted to Evens.

Daniels continued to wire the police from New York, demanding that further investigation be made and that custody of the body be granted to him.  He even contacted James A. Blake, a relative living in Glendale, asking him to take over the burial, but Blake refused to get involved.  For days, Evens’s body lay in the R.C. Dellenbaugh funeral parlor at 630 Venice Blvd., until Evens finally relented, and agreed to send his wife’s body to her family in New York.

Scarlet Letters

poison

June 5, 1927
Hollywood

The headlines turned her story into a cliché: a young woman from the Midwest commits suicide by swallowing poison after the Hollywood star machine chews her up and spits her out. But 22-year-old Patricia Marshall’s death today was a bit more complicated than that.

For one thing, though she took part in amateur dramatics back home in Missouri and worked as a film extra since her arrival in Hollywood three years ago, Patricia aspired to a career in business. Until recently she had been a student at the Hollywood Secretarial College.

Then there were the letters in her room. In one, written about a week before she died but never sent, the young woman made a declaration she was ultimately unable to keep: “There are so many suicides in Hollywood one must wear armor and make a vow against self-extinction—in suicide by poison.” In addition to this and a note addressed to her mother (“You are to forget me. Never think of me.”), there were several missives to and from various men. When police contacted one of them, insurance man Harry Rosenberg of Washington, D.C., he called himself an “old friend” of the deceased but insisted there was never a hint of romance between them.

This assertion was refuted by Patricia Marshall’s mother, who testified at a coroner’s inquest that her daughter and Rosenberg were engaged and planned to be married soon. Imagine Mrs. Marshall’s shock when it came out that Patricia’s “fiancé” was already married and the father of several children. Nor was that all—there were those damnable letters. In one, Rosenberg cut off his $15 weekly payments to Patricia; in another, his daughter threatened to have her arrested for blackmail and extortion if Patricia continued to annoy her father for money.

Perhaps with Mrs. Marshall in mind, the coroner discreetly concluded that Patricia committed suicide after a “disappointment” in love.

secretarial-school

Silk Stocking of DOOM!

April 19, 1927
Pasadena 

Yee-ouch! Mrs. Fred Anderson, Pasadena matron of 1304 North Catalina Ave., was dressing this morning when she slid one shapely foot into a stocking she’d last worn several months back on a visit to the remote  Imperial Valley.

It seems she picked up a hitchhiker on that trip, for inside the toe wriggled one very annoyed small scorpion. It struck the lady thrice, and off she hopped to Emergency Hospital, where Chief Surgeon Clement C. Troensegaard told her how lucky she was to have been foot-stung and not tongue-stung, for only on especially tender spots are scorpion wounds fatal.

Still, we bet this is one gal who will never put on a pair of hose again without checking them very, very carefully for unwanted guests…. as should we all.

Sleeping Like A Baby

June 14, 1907
Sonoratown

Mrs. Santos Rodriguez (nee Galvies) has a lover, Virde Parra. She also has a little 3-year-old daughter, and watching the babe was putting a crimp in her romantic life. A quick trip down to the druggist provided mama with what was almost certainly a bottle of lauadanum, that effective blend of opium and alcohol so beloved by Coleridge and de Quincey. As the child slipped into a powerful sleep illuminated with extraordinary visions, Santos slipped out of her little house at 643 Buena Vista Street and met Virde for a quickie at the La Guerra Hotel on North Main Street near Market.

But the lovers’ plans were thwarted when the lady’s husband, having heard rumors of her evening wanders and Parra’s visits, came home for an early dinner and discovered his child insensible. Patrolmen Leon and Murphy were called, and the child-doper and her honey were quickly found and placed in police custody, where the lady gave her maiden name and refused to talk about the case.

 

 

A Fine Metz He’s In

May 19, 1907
Los Angeles

John B. Metz seems like just another suicide–the 44-year-old Deputy County Assessor was a well-dressed, well-trusted official-about-town who would often brood about how he would never marry because some girl had once jilted him. So when his body was found by the landlady at 514 South Wall Street, hanging out of bed with foam on his lips, self-administered poison was thought to be the death-dealing culprit.

Or could the positioning of his corpse be signs of a struggle? And what of the various recent sums of money, now missing, not properly turned into the Assessor’s office? Yesterday, before his after-work bout of heavy drinking (including, perhaps, a carbolic of some sort) Metz failed to turn in $120 ($2,637 USD 2006) which remains missing to-day.

Metz was removed to Bresee Brothers Undertaking at 855 South Figueroa; they will perform an autopsy as to aid the inquest.

Dogs and Whisky: Saviors of Man

April 21, 1907
Newhall
 
Mr. Lorenzo La Frank was working on his ranch in Newhall when attacked and bitten by a rattlesnake, which leaped and fastened itself upon his back, twisting itself around his suspenders.  But La Frank’s brave and faithful dog leapt as well, tearing the snake from his master.  La Frank was admitted to County Hospital with a thinning of the blood, a condition peculiar and particular to a rattler’s bite.  Given as bethinned blood soaks through the walls of vessels, ending up in the lungs, La Frank is being administered copious whisky to combat the pneumonia he has subsequently contracted.    La Frank is expected to recover in full.