Venice – 1947 Project

Mysteries of the Road

accidents
January 19, 1927
Santa Monica, Venice

A drained, shamefaced whisky bottle and wrecked car were all officers found tonight at Colorado Blvd and Twenty-Third Street.

A thorough check of the hospitals and morgues revealed nothing further.

In nearby Venice, at Washington and Brooks, an ambulance was summoned when excited folk in the vicinity witnessed an auto turn turtle. In true 1920s fashion, the two young male occupants righted the thing and drove off, presumably in a crazy zigzag with zany piano accompaniment.

The Venice Slasher

October 31, 1927

Venice, CA

A gory scene unfolded at the Venice Police Station today as 23-year-old Eddie Berry burst through the front door with a slit throat and passed out on the floor.

An employee of the Venice Speedboat Company, Berry had been working on the Venice Pier when he was accosted by a woman packing a knife in her handbag. The dame was Berry’s sweet wife. She began to argue with him, then drew out her knife and slashed him across the throat, narrowly missing his jugular vein.

Berry was taken to the emergency room for stitches, while police went out in search of the estranged wife. However, the search was later dropped when Berry refused to press charges.

Okay, it’s not much of a Halloween story, but it was this or the story of a few rowdy teens from the Redlands being sent to a YWCA dance to keep them from vandalizing property. Plus, isn’t "The Venice Slasher" a great name for a would-be murderess?

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.

It’s all in how you tell it

May 25, 1927
Venice

Seems a traveling sewing machine salesman dropped by Mrs. L.K. Sitton’s home at 1004 Electric Avenue and, when she complained of a slight headache, mentioned that he was an expert in Swedish massage and offered to relieve her.

The Times reported that "He fled… when his victim screamed and her husband returned unexpectedly." Though we wonder if perhaps things didn’t happen quite in that order.

In any event, Robert S. Harrell, 41, was arrested at San Juan and Sixth Avenue on charges of attempting an attack on the lady.

Never Trust A Guy Called “Happy”

May 17, 1927
Venice

Druggist W.G. Ferrel, manager of the store at Windward and Ocean Front, was not pleased with the quality of work performed by Negro janitor Claude "Happy" Douglas, and so he took a moment this morning to rebuke his employee of six years for latest poor mop job.

"Happy" must have had a bad night, for instead of shuffling his feet and "yessir"-ing the boss man in the time-honored tradition, he pulled out a huge blade and stabbed Ferrel in the back. The metal bent against bone, and "Happy" pulled it out again, twisted and useless.

Then he made a run for the door, but he obviously hadn’t noticed Patrolman French, who was in the telephone booth. Hearing the commotion, French stepped out with revolver drawn and stopped the would-be slayer at the scene. Farrel was rushed to Loamshire Hospital, Santa Monica, in serious condition, and "Happy" held on charges of attempted murder.

Of course, all this might have been avoided, had Farrel checked his employee’s references. For "Happy" is almost certainly the same Claude Douglas, then 30, who in July 1920 savagely assaulted his employer Mrs. Emma Davy, manageress of the Atlas Hotel at 10th and Figueroa, when she discovered him in the basement with a cache of stolen fabric from the Patsy Frock and Romper Company next door. Mrs. Davy, whose shoulder was dislocated, eye injured and arm sprained, was only saved by the intervention of her adult sons George and Allen, who held Douglas until police arrived. Later, in Douglas’ rooms at 1326 East Fourteenth Street, they found a great quantity of good stolen from the Atlas.

Mrs. Davy seems to have taken this as a sign, and in October leased the Atlas to the YWCA, which transformed it into a dormatory for transient women, at which point "Happy" might have wished he’d controlled his temper.

No Mermaid She

April 10, 1927
Venice

It was motorist S.H. Henry who saw it first, bobbing in the Grand Canal with slow, horrible motions. He leaned in and saw a middle aged woman’s body, fully clothed save for her hat, bound round with rope. He ran for the cops. When they hauled her out, they found there were no ropes, but long strands of seaweed that had caught round the body as it floated through the gentle waterways.

A bruise on the brow suggested violence, but ultimately it was determined that the victim, Mrs. Margaret Kelly of Chicago, had killed herself after long despondency over ill health. Perhaps she vainly hoped the balmy winds and lovely vistas of Venice-by-the-Sea would sooth her worries. She had $207 cash when found, more than enough for her passage first to Sharp & Nolan undertakers (beachside specialists in these messy water cases), thence to Chicago and the afterlife.

A Tasty Tide

September 22, 1907
Venice

Someone–perhaps a drunken and disgruntled cook who was fired last night–snuck into the larder of the Ship Hotel around midnight and brought forth a great quantity of luxury foodstuffs, which were cast into the surf. It was no easy job. Three whole loins of beef, 200 pounds in weight, 250 pounds of clams and a number of oysters from eastern climes were among the waste found on the sand with dawn’s light.

Vice in Venice

August 30, 1907 invadelair
Venice

Get talked up by a booster…wend your way through the hall…step on the special stair which emits a loud buzz, warning those you approach. You’re one your way into the Venice Club, Windward Avenue, Venice, California.

The windows are covered in black oilcloth to keep out light and sound and prying eyes. Inside there’s a roulette wheel, stacked high with gold and silver, emitting its seductive clicky whir, counterposed by the atonal, plangent clack of chips. Verdant young society men huddle around the faro layout. You may or may not notice—they’re all losing. Certainly your luck can’t be as bad!

Your luck would be bad indeed this night, as Deputy District Attorney John North kicks in the door and announces that everyone is under arrest. This would not phase the roulette dealer: “He looked coldly at the officers and his slender gambler fingers toyed idly with the stack of chips at the edge of the table; his little, ratty, sharp face was a slight sneer, half of amusement.”

The Venice Club, run by an aggregation of Arizona sure-thing men, is as crooked as they come. It is said that the reason the faro dealer has one eye is due to time spent having to look crooked at the bent ends of marked cards.

As the room was pinched, a sudden epidemic of sick wives befell Los Angeles. But the cops would have none of it, and everyone was hauled in. The gamblers were allowed to kitty their boodle—some $1486 ($30,498 2006 USD).

The club kept a register of all the tenderfoot gilded youth they’d fished, and, amusingly, the paper printed it in full:
listofbadmen
Ah, would that the story should end there. The bust of the Venice Club opened wide a scandal that shed no new good light on the already suspect “beach towns.”

crooksgive

The Venice police were as fixed as the card games, and got fat from the brace games that lined the seashore. (During Fiesta week, the same underworld figures who ran the Venice Club ran a crooked [and police protected] gambling hall downtown on Broadway between First and Second.) Venice men “higher up” had cemented relationships with blind pigs, dens of ruination for young girls, and that special element adept in fixing elections. Abbot Kinney and (Ocean Park magnate) G. M. Jones battled it out and the cops pledged their various allegiances in the war.

The corruption scandal lingered long and luscious…September 11, 1907:
knifehilt