Month: December 2005

Mrs. Mabel Axley, 30-year-old beautician, didn’t tuck her sons Claude Jr., 8, and Jimmy, 3, into bed on Christmas eve. After a fight with her drunken, unemployed husband Claude, she was locked out of the family manse at 739 Marine St., and spent the night in the garage. Mabel awoke to the heat and smell and sound of fire–the house was burning, and no one responded when she pounded on the door.

Gerald C. Benson, who lives at 801 1/2 Marine, soaked himself at the garden hose and made several valiant efforts to rescue the children, to no avail. The children’s mother was badly burned attempting to get to her sons, and is in Santa Monica Hospital tonight. Claude Axley, meanwhile, emerged unscathed. He has been charged with two counts of murder.

And on Marine St., a charred teddy bear lolls in the ashes, along with other ruined Christmas gifts opened not by tiny fingers, but by flame.

While staff and customers awaited the start of the annual holiday party at Vallera’s Rotisserie Restaurant and Delicatessen, 8680 Wilshire Blvd., the festivities were disturbed by the sudden explosion of two stench bombs, one of which had been left a phone booth. The restaurant is the sixth business being picketed by the A.F.L. Culinary Workers union to be attacked in this manner.

Owner Joe Vallera says that the union is disputing one employee’s wages, but that most of his 60 workers have been crossing the line. Those workers rushed into action following the bombing, manning mops and fans to flush the foul smell away. After an hour they had either succeeded or become acclimated, and the party went on as planned.

Ho Ho Ho, Stenchy Christmas!

Trying to entertain her daughter Penelope, 18 months, while herself recovering from surgery, Mrs. Evelyn Gavrus of 10923 S. Hobart Blvd. tossed a closed bottle of laxative pills to the baby, thinking she would toy with it like a rattle. The child deftly popped the lid off and gobbled down four or five pills as Evelyn screamed for help. Neighbors came running, but by the time they got Penelope down to Park Emergency Hospital, Gardena, she was dead, her tiny frame overwhelmed by the 2/100s of a grain of poison inside each pill.

Mrs. Helen Miller, 19, met a man in a restaurant about a week ago, and agreed to go back to his hotel room. He told her his name was Donald Graeff, and if she thought she might forget it, any chance was lost after he held her captive and carved his initials into her upper thigh with a dull jacknife. “I am going to brand you,” he explained, “So I can keep you all to myself.”

Today, Mrs. Miller managed to get word out to police, and was rescued. Mr. Graeff is in police custody, and will be questioned about several unsolved sex/mutilation murders in the city, including that of Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia.

Wiley and Zelda Mills, both 65, took sleeping pills in their apartment at 1753 1/2 N. Berendo St. after preparing their wills and writing apologetic notes. Zelda’s to their son Francis in Berkeley read ” We are sorry to have to do this now. But it is the only thing left. Dad and I talked it out and there would be no use of my trying to go on alone. We love you very much. Mother.”

The couple’s son-in-law Cambern Cottrell, 1025 S. Westmoreland Ave., alerted police when he was unable to get the Mills on the phone or to answer their door. When officers L.T. Napier and J.H. Stein entered the apartment, they found Wiley dead and Zelda unconscious. She is in critical condition in General Hospital.

The couple was apparently despondent over financial problems and the death of Cambern’s wife, their daughter Marjorie, from pneumonia four years ago.