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.