Month: July 2005

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

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)

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

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)

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

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